About this work
In 1877, McCubbin entered the School of Painting at Melbourne’s National Gallery School where he studied under Eugène von Guérard, with Tom Roberts as a fellow student. When Roberts returned from overseas in 1885, he and McCubbin led plein-air painting expeditions to Box Hill, Mentone and later in the Heidelberg area. McCubbin was nicknamed ‘the Proff’ within his friendship group for his wide reading and philosophising. McCubbin frequently used members of his family as models for his major figurative compositions. Mary is one of the artist’s major portraits of the period and depicts Mary Jane Moriarty, the sister of McCubbin’s wife, Annie Lucy Moriarty.