Luce, Molly, 1896-

Molly Luce, 1896-, painter of Little Compton, R.I.

From the description of Oral history interview with Molly Luce, 1981 Mar. 10 - June 18. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 646397013

Molly Luce (1896-4986) was a painter of Little Compton, R.I.

From the description of Oral history interview with Molly Luce, 1981 Mar. 10-June 18. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 756821050

Painter (Little Compton, R.I.).

From the description of Molly Luce interviews, 1981 Mar. 10 - June 18. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 220181829

Marian S. Burroughs, known professionally as Molly Luce, was born on December 18, 1896, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and in Plainfield and Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and spent summers with her grandparents in Kinsville, Ohio. Upon completing high school in 1914, Molly Luce began further studies at Wheaton College, where she earned an associate's degree. Beginning in 1916, at the Art Student's League in New York, Ms. Luce studied under, along with other distinguished faculty, Kenneth Hayes Miller. In addition to teaching his students to paint, Molly Luce writes that Miller "taught, first of all respect for painting as an occupation and appreciation of the place held by professional artists." In her unpublished autobiography, Ms. Luce expresses frequently the concern that artists be taken seriously as professionals and speaks especially of the difficulties encountered by women working in the fine arts. In 1922, she began a tour of Europe which took her through France, Switzerland and Italy. Molly Luce developed into an important painter of 'The American Scene' and D. Roger Howlett, of Childs Gallery in Boston, feels that the time she spent in Italy "helped to bring together her training and consciousness of 'place' that were to stay with her for her career." While her contemporaries were heading in more abstract directions, at an artist's colony in St. Paul du Var and in Paris Molly Luce began to solidify her commitment to "realistic as opposed to abstract art." Shortly after returning to the United States in 1924, her first publicly exhibited painting was hung in the Whitney Studio Club, New York; her first one-woman show opened at the Club later the same year. From then until 1950 her paintings were featured in prominent museums and galleries all over the United States.

In 1966 twenty Luce paintings were featured at a one-woman show celebrating the 50th anniversary of the graduation of the class of 1916 (A) from Wheaton College, and a major traveling retrospective of paintings from 1917-1980 was organized by the Childs Gallery, Boston, in 1980.

In 1926 Molly Luce married Alan Burroughs, painter and art historian, associated with the Fogg Museum at Harvard. Mr. Burroughs pioneered in the use of X-ray technology in the examination of art works and archeological artifacts. They lived in the Boston area during the early years of their marriage and spent summers, beginning in the thirties, in Little Compton, Rhode Island. In 1942 the lure of life in Little Compton drew them full-time and Molly Luce lives there to this day. Alan Burroughs died in 1965. The name of Molly's stepson, Bruce Burroughs, appears once, on a family card and there is a brother, Clark, some of whose letters appear in the collection. Other than these two names, no other family information could be found.

From the guide to the Molly Luce Papers, 1924-1980, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)