Lucia Fairchild Fuller

Lucia Fairchild Fuller’s Boston-based family played a prominent role in the literary and visual arts, and counted John Singer Sargent and William James among their close friends. Lucia was invited to paint a mural, “The Women of Plymouth,” for the Women’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Against her family’s wishes, she pursued a career as a painter, and married fellow art student Henry Brown Fuller in 1893. Thereafter, she supported him and their two children by switching from murals to miniatures. She was a founding member of the American Society of Miniature Painters, and studied with William Merritt Chase and Harry Siddons Mowbray. Her miniatures won medals at the 1900 Paris Exposition and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Her career and life were cut short after she contracted multiple sclerosis.