Artist Maud Hunt Squire (American, 1873 - 1955)

Femme et Enfant

Date1907

DimensionsSight: 6 11/16 × 4 15/16 in. (17 × 12.5 cm)

Object numberN0009.2023

Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Museum Purchase.

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextMaud Hunt Squire was an American painter and printmaker. Squire gained notice for her color intaglio prints and her work in colored pastels and was active as a book illustrator beginning while she was still a student; much of her work in the field was published jointly with her partner Ethel Mars. She became a member of the Société Salon d'Automne, the Société des Dessinateurs et d'Humoristes, and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and exhibited work widely, including at the Pan Pacific International Exposition of 1915.

Squire met Ethel Mars, with whom she would remain for the rest of her life, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. The couple went to Paris in 1903, remaining there until the outbreak of World War I forced them to return to the United States in 1915. They went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, both becoming active in the local art scene. Some years later they returned to France, living in Vence for the rest of their lives while traveling throughout Europe.

Squire and Mars were great friends of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas while living in France, and the writer's poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene", believed to be the first such work to use the word "gay" to describe homosexuality, is meant to describe the couple.
ProvenanceThe Collection of a Massachusetts Lady, 2023
Grogan and Co, Boston, MA, 2023

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