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Thomas Harrison Montgomery, Jr. (1873 – 1912)

Thomas Harrison Montgomery, Jr. (1873 – 1912), Oil on Canvas
Mary Fassett
#0000.0474

Mary Fassett was an American artist who learned to paint from her father, the respected portrait painter Truman Fassett. Beyond her father's influence, she had no formal training except for the guidance of her mentor, Theodore Mueller, and one painting course that she took during her time at Sarah Lawrence College, where she graduated in 1935. Fassett's body of work includes paintings, etchings, drawings, life-size sculpture, ceramics, illustrated books, and translated poetry. Her style remained rooted in the traditional painting techniques of the Old Masters, even while many of her contemporaries were being influenced by the rise of Modernism. Her artistic interests shifted throughout her more than eighty-year career, however, in an interview from 2001 she said: "Today I am still ruled by the decision I made many years ago. This was the commitment to a truthful integrity of vision." Fassett continued to produce work until her death, in 2016, at the age of one hundred and one.