Pennsylvania-born Mary Hiester Reid attended the Pennsylvania Academy and trained under Thomas Eakins. It was there where she met her husband, Canadian painter George Agnew Reid. The couple moved to Toronto and often summered at Candace Wheeler’s art colony in Onteora, New York. Reid was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy—women were not allowed to be elected—and the first female painter to be awarded a solo exhibition there.