Marion Boyd Allen

Marion Boyd Allen (23 October 1862 – 28 December 1941) was an American painter, known for her portraits and landscapes.

Family and early life Allen was born in Boston in 1862 to Stillman Boyd Allen, an attorney and state legislator, and Harriet Smith Allen, née Seaward. She was sister to Willis Boyd Allen, author of The Mountaineers. When Allen was young, her parents took her on a European vacation, where she first decided to become a painter after sketching the Alps. at the age of 36, where she studied under Frank Weston Benson, Edmund C. Tarbell and Philip Hale; she received her diploma in 1909.

After graduation, Allen gained particular recognition for her portraits. She exhibited in group shows at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris; National Arts Club, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Cincinnati Art Museum, among others. After graduation, she held a solo exhibition at the Copley Society Gallery in 1910, and continued to exhibit there until about 1930. Some of her other solo exhibitions were held at the Ferargil Galleries in New York in 1928, Bose Galleries in Boston in 1929 and 1930, Argent Galleries in New York in 1931, 1932 and 1934, and the Boston Art Club in 1936. Her career took off after her painting Enameling was included in the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915. at a time when landscape painting was almost exclusively a male-dominated field. In 1932 she attended an event by the Woman’s Club of Newton Centre in Massachusetts, whose purpose was to exhibit women’s achievements in art. She was described as having “attained international prominence”. Some other artists present were Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, Gertrude Fiske, Lilian Westcott Hale, Laura Coombs Hills, Lilla Cabot Perry, and Anna Coleman Ladd. Some of her most characteristic paintings are The Green Veil, Air Castles, The Morning Stint, and Enameling.