Mary Fife Laning

Mary Elizabeth Fife was born in 1898 or 1900[1] in Canton, Ohio.[2]

In 1923, she earned a B.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1925-1927, she did postgraduate work at Cooper Union. In 1928, she studied at the Academie Russe in Paris.[2]

From 1930 to 1935, she studied at the Art Students League under Kenneth Hayes Miller. There she met her husband, Edward Laning, whom she married in 1933. The Lanings became part of the Miller circle with Reginald Marsh and Isabel Bishop.[2]

The Lanings lived most of their lives in Brooklyn, New York.[2]

In the 1940s, as a member of the National Association of Women Artists, Laning taught (with her husband) at the Kansas City Art Institute.[2]

She survived her husband by a decade, dying in 1991.[1][2][3]

Fife's work has exhibited at the Butler Art Institute, Ohio, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.[2]

Paintings include:

• Girl with Open Blouse (1925)[1]
• Place in the Sun (1934)
• Forbidden Love (1935)[1]
• The Lovers (1st Stoop) (1935)
• Klein's Dressing Room (1930s)
• Rocky Shore Newport RI (undated)
• Untitled (1946) Painting of Mary and her sisters in Greece.

Exhibitions[1] included:

• Between Heaven and Hell
• Union Square in the 1930s
• New York Intaglio Figure, 1917 to 1954

• Wooden, Howard E. (1982). Edward Laning, American Realist, 1906-1981: A Retrospective Exhibition: Essay and Exhibition Catalogue. Wichita, Kansas: Wichita Art Museum.
• Edward Laning: Paintings and Drawings, March 21-April 18, 1992. New York: Kennedy Galleries. 1992. LCCN 93136738.