Maud Hunt Squire 1873-1954

Born into a family of artists (her father, Alfred Squire, was a violinist and musician, and her mother a drafts­woman), Maud Hunt Squire turned to painting at a very early age. Between 1894 and 1898, she studied at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts, where she followed the teachings of Lewis Henry Meakin and Frank Duveneck. During her years of training, she gained notice for her polychrome intaglio prints and her luminous pastels. At the same time, she began a career as an illustrator of children’s books, often in collaboration with her lifelong companion, Ethel Mars, whom she met at the academy.

In 1903, the two artists decided to settle in Paris in order to pursue their artistic careers. From 1906 onward, Maud Hunt Squire exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne, then at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from the following year, as well as at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908. After initially favoring landscapes and rural scenes, she turned toward a more direct observation of the realities of Parisian nightlife.

At the same time, she took part continuously between 1909 and 1920 in the group exhibitions of the Salon de la gravure originale en couleur, as well as those of La Comédie Humaine at the Galerie Georges Petit. Collected by Jacques Doucet and Paul Poiret, Maud Hunt Squire was actively involved with the Parisian avant-garde, as well as with certain compatriots established in the capital, such as the artist Edna Boies Hopkins. With Ethel Mars, she became friends with Alice Babette Toklas and Gertrude Stein, who would later portray them in Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, a short text with subversive lesbian themes first published in Geography and Plays in December 1922, and then in Vanity Fair in July 1923.

The outbreak of the First World War forced the couple to return to the United States. Settling in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the two women became deeply involved in the local artistic scene and exhibited at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. After the war, Squire and Mars returned to France, settling first in Vernon and then in Vence, in the south, where they permanently established their studios.