Mary Townsend Mason
American (1886-1964)
Mary Townsend Mason was born in Ohio, but spent the majority of her life in Philadelphia and on Monhegan Island in Maine. The artist was known for her plein air landscapes and seascapes.
Mason studied at the Maryland Institute of Design and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with William Merritt Chase and Hugh Breckenridge. In 1909 she traveled to France and Italy on a Cresson Traveling Scholarship and in the 1920s visited Monhegan Island for the first time at the invitation of her friend, Alice Kent Stoddard. Mason later built a house and established a painting studio on the island.
Mason belonged to the Philadelphia Art Alliance and the Philadelphia Watercolor Club. She exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Carnegie Institute; Baltimore Museum of Art; and San Francisco Art Museum and in Venice, Honolulu, and Buenos Aires. She won several awards including the Pennsylvania Academy’s Mary Smith Prize. Her work is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia and Monhegan Museum.
