Three Rabbits

Mary Russell Smith spent her life wandering the fields and woods and gathering objects that caught her eye near her childhood home close to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. Although she never attended art school she came from a distinguished family of American artists and her mother, a noted still life and flower painter, taught her beginning at the age of 14. She quickly became an accomplished artist best known for her small genre paintings of chickens and barnyard scenes.

When she died in 1878 at age 36, her father summed up the inspiration nature held for Smith, and her love of it, in “A Brief Sketch of the Life of Mary Smith, the Painter”:

Such habits early in life no doubt laid the foundation of that strong love of nature that was more a passion than a predilection, and remained the ruling principle of her life and art.