Anna Massey Lea Merritt made a successful career in England and America as a painter of landscapes and portraits, and as an etcher. Her portraits and paintings of the figure have an introspective quality with a hint of primitivism.

Born in Philadelphia in 1844 to a Quaker family, Merritt began art study at age seven with William Furnass. In 1867, she accompanied her family to live in Europe and studied briefly with Heinrich Hofmann in Dresden, Germany, Stefano Ussi in Florence, Italy, and for a longer period with Henry Merritt, an art critic in London, beginning in 1872. The teacher-pupil relationship flowered into something more personal, but ended tragically with Henry Merritt's death just three months after their marriage in 1877....