Mary Blood Mellen

Mary Blood Mellen (1819-1886) was an American painter associated with the Hudson River circle and the luminist style of New England, and one of several artists who trained under Fitz Henry Lane. Her importance lies in combining copies of her mentor's works with an original output of landscapes and seascapes of Massachusetts and Maine.

Born in Sterling, Massachusetts, she learned watercolor as a girl and later attended the Frye Academy in nearby Bolton. In 1840 she married the Universalist minister Charles W. Mellen, and the couple moved frequently across New England. By the mid-century they had settled near Boston, where she probably came to know Lane's work, and in 1859 she travelled with him to Sterling to paint the old Blood family home in different seasons. After her husband's death in 1866 she moved to Hartford, and the censuses recorded her as an artist, suggesting that painting had become her main source of income.

Her known works include a view of the Blood family home, the seascape Shipwreck on the Beach from the 1870s, and Field Beach, from around the 1850s. A series of moonlight scenes is also attributed to her, possibly based on a lost Lane or created during her mourning. She died of typhoid fever in Sterling in 1886.

Her legacy rests chiefly on her relationship with Lane and on the survival of her work in collections such as the Cape Ann Museum.