Mary Harvey Tannahill (January 11, 1863 – June 21, 1951) was an American painter, printmaker, embroiderer and batik maker. She studied in the United States and Europe and spent 30 summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with the artist colony there. She was instructed by Blanche Lazzell there and assumed the style of the Provincetown Printers. She exhibited her works through a number of artist organizations. A native of North Carolina, she spent much of her career based in New York.
Tannahill and her siblings were educated privately. She early displayed an interest in art that was fostered and encouraged by her parents[1][3] and due to the family's wealth, she was comfortable pursuing her interest.[4] The family was close-knit; few of the children married, and none had surviving offspring.[2]
Robert Tannahill died in 1883, leaving behind eight children, of whom Mary was the eldest.[2]
Mary Harvey Tannahill, Untitled (Woman sitting by a window), Competition for Women Photographers, 1912
She came to be known first for her miniatures painted with watercolor on ivory,[1]
a medium in which she met with some success.[1][2] The Philadelphia Society of Miniature Painters exhibited her works early in her career[4] and she was a member of the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters.[1] She also had an early interest in photography and submitted a photograph to the Competition for Women Photographers in 1912.[6]
In 1916, she exhibited at the second annual show of the Provincetown Art Association[2]
and spent more than 30 summers at the artist's colony in Provincetown.[1]
She continued showing with the Provincetown Art Association almost yearly until 1938, displaying woodblock prints at various exhibits. She soon became a close friend of William and Marguerite Zorach and Robert Henri as well, through them becoming introduced to the work of the Art Students League of New York.[2] In 1917, the Society of Independent Artists held their first show, in which two of her pieces were displayed. She exhibited more of her work with the Society two more times.[2][4] By 1921, she exhibited her work An American Batik at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was also an example in the book First Lessons in Batik published in 1921.[7]
Stylistically, Tannahill's work derived some of its influence from folk art, which was combined with modernism. She evinced interest in continued artistic growth throughout her career, absorbing influences such as Cubism and Precisionism in some of her later works.[8] A Raleigh newspaper critic, writing in The News & Observer in 1937, called her an "unusual painter of familiar objects in the modern manner",[2] and she was sometimes described as an "artist's artist"; she herself said that "her work was considered modern but not overly so".[8] The "Eight Southern Women" exhibit, held in 1986 at the Museum of Art in Greenville County, South Carolina and the Gibbes Art Gallery in Charleston, included her works.[1]
Tannahill, described as having been tall, blond, and striking in appearance in her youth,[2] never married. She was a Christian Scientist who believed in suffrage for women.[11]
She lived in New York by 1914, giving her address as Van Dyck Studios at 939 Eighth Avenue.[11] Beginning in 1916, she spent her summers in Massachusetts a tradition that she continued for 30 summers.[1] She spent the last years of her life and died in Warrenton. She was buried in Petersburg at Blandford Cemetery.[1]
Legacy
Since her death, Tannahill's work has continued to be included in exhibitions, such as Eight Southern Women at the Greenville County Museum of Art in 1986[2] and Nine from North Carolina in 1989 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts[8] and in a traveling show, like the exhibit sponsored by the Fayetteville Museum of Art in North Carolina.[12]
^ abPetteys, Chris (1985). Dictionary of Women Artists: An International Dictionary of Women Artists Born Before 1900. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co. ISBN0-8161-8456-9.
