biography of Mary Menessier BECK (?-1833)

Death place: Lexington, KY

Addresses: Baltimore; Phila.; Lexington, KY; Lancaster, KY; Cincinnati, OH

Profession: Landscape painter, art teacher

Exhibited: Lexington, KY, 1822-23

Comments: Teacher and owner of several early 19th-century academies for girls and women. Married itinerant artist George Beck (see entry) in the 1790s (prob. in England where he was exhibiting at the time). Because her father owned a tavern in Cincinnati in the 1790s (called Menessier's tavern), it is not clear whether she was born in Ohio or England. Mary and George came to the U.S. sometime in the mid 1790s, working in 1795 at Norfolk (VA) and moving later that year to Baltimore where Mary Beck opened a school for girls. It is possible that some of these years were spent in Cincinnati, as George was known to have worked there for a time. In 1798, the couple moved to Philadelphia, where Mary again opened a girl's school and where they lived until c.1804. About that time the Becks moved to Lexington (KY) but since George was traveling back and forth between Philadelphia and Lexington it is not certain when Mary settled in the Kentucky city. She did, however, open an academy for women there in 1811, running it for the next fifteen years until c.1826. Her students included many amateur artists, the best known being Anna Maria Von Phul (see Von Phul). Although none of Beck's landscape paintings have survived, she is believed to be one of the earliest women to paint landscapes in the U.S. and is known to have painted both classical scenes and estate views. In 1826 she went to Lancaster (KY) to become headmistress of a school; and in 1829 she moved to Cincinnati where she taught at Dr. John Lock's Female Academy and also opened her own women's drawing academy.

Sources: G&W; Pleasants, "Four Late Eighteenth Century American Landscape Painters," 205-206; Dunlap, History, II, 226; Price, Old Masters of the Bluegrass; Van Ravenswaay, "Anna Maria von Phul," 369, 383; Cincinnati CD 1829. More recently, see Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 2: 154-56, 179; Hageman, 114 (under George Jacob Beck); 300 Years of American Art, 59 (under George Beck).