Maria "May" Mott Hallowell Loud (August 22, 1860 – February 1, 1916) was an American artist, suffragist, and member of the Hallowell family.

Family and personal life

Maria Mott Hallowell, known as "May", was born in 1860 in

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 United States census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus on both sides of the Medford and Somervill ...

, to Richard Price Hallowell and Anna Coffin (Davis) Hallowell. Two of her uncles fought in the Civil War, Edward Needles Hallowell and Norwood Penrose Hallowell, and her great-grandmother was the abolitionist and suffragist

Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (née Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quakers, Quaker, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position ...

. May married architect Joseph Prince Loud in 1901.

Art education

Loud received some early art training from her mother, who was an amateur artist. In 1871, they went to Paris together to study art for a few months. In 1879, she enrolled at the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is a dedicated art school within Tufts University, a private research university in Massa ...

in Boston, where she studied with painter Otto Grundmann and became a friend of fellow student Frank Weston Benson. Together, she, Benson, and Robert Reid edited the school's publication, ''The Art Student''. After four years, Loud left the school and returned to France for further training, spending 1883–84 at the Académie Julien in Paris, studying with under Tony Robert-Fleury and others. On her return to the United States, she continued her training at the Cowles Art School in Boston. She also took private lessons with Abbott Thayer and Denman W. Ross.

Art career

Loud worked mainly in oil, watercolor, and pastel and is best known for her portraits. Beginning in the late 1880s, she exhibited regularly for a quarter century, showing at the Paris Salon, the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The ...

in Chicago, Illinois., the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other venues. She was active in arts organizations, sitting on the council of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and joining the Boston Water Color Club, the Copley Society, and other organizations. In 1901, she worked as a designer for the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts. Later in her career, she took up photography, set up her own

darkroom A darkroom is used to process photographic film, make Photographic printing, prints and carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light-sensitive photographic materials, including ...

, and began exhibiting photographs as well as paintings. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts held a memorial exhibition of her work in late 1916.

Public service

Loud and other members of her

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

family were founding members of the Boston branch of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...

(NAACP). She sat on the branch's board of directors and was considered one of its key members. She also fund-raised for the Calhoun Colored School in Alabama.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loud, Maria Mott Hallowell 1860 births 1916 deaths Hallowell family 19th-century American painters People from Medford, Massachusetts American Quakers School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni Académie Julian alumni 19th-century American women painters