Lucia Fairchild Fuller (1870-1924) was the daughter of the wealthy Boston, Massachusetts, investor Charles Fairchild. Her parents gathered many artists around them, including members of the Fuller family and John Singer Sargent, perhaps Boston’s most famous 19th century artist. However, Charles strongly disapproved when the 18-year-old Lucia became deeply attracted to Henry Brown Fuller, a fellow student in art class some five years her senior. For the next few years they carried on a romance. In 1893 Lucia Fairchild created a mural for the Women’s Building at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinios, an immense showcase of the United States’ wealth and power. Henry and Lucia married later that year and moved to Fuller’s hometown of Deerfield, Massachusetts, where this photograph was taken. They had two children, Charles Fairchild Fuller and Clara Bartram Fuller. Lucia began painting miniature portraits in 1894. Although this form of art had fallen out of favor, Lucia was one of a group of artists whose mastery of it revived interest in the form, and she supported the family through the sales of her work to the wealthy and fashionable. The family eventually settled in Plainfield, New Hampshire, near the Cornish art colony established by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Lucia was increasingly crippled by a disease later recognized as multiple sclerosis, which steadily robbed her of her health and ability to paint. She died in 1924.