The Marian Williams Steele Gallery is dedicated to increasing awareness and appreciation of Marian ’s extraordinary contributions to the arts.

Our mission is to preserve her legacy, showcasing her work through public exhibitions, and facilitating its inclusion in museum and gallery collections, as well as private collections. We aim to celebrate Marian’s artistic and cultural significance as an influential member of several creative communities in the North East, and honoring her achievements as a pioneering woman in the arts.

Marian Williams-Steele

American, 1912-2001

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Marian Williams Steele was an accomplished landscape and portrait artist who received more than 100 awards for her masterful paintings in oil and watercolor. She studied at the Trenton School of Industrial Arts and, later, the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Upon graduation she was awarded the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship for European study and the first ever Charles Toppan Prize. After returning from Europe, she began studying and painting at the Albert C. Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia by special invitation.

During her career she had studios in both Cambridge and Gloucester, Massachusetts. She moved to Cambridge in the late 1930s and later became a full-time Gloucester resident and painted almost exclusively on the North Shore. She travelled extensively internationally and also took frequent trips to southern California to paint and exhibit. She maintained close friendships with many other accomplished New England artists including Mary Bryan and Emile Gruppe with whom she occasionally painted. Because of her reputation as an accurate yet exciting and creative portrait artist, she was also commissioned to paint numerous celebrities and sports figures including Mohammed Ali, Mario Andretti, and Joe Namath.

During the height of her career, Mrs. Steele was an esteemed member of many prestigious art associations including the Guild of Boston Artists, the California Art Association, the Rockport Art Association, the Cambridge Art Association, and the American Association of Professional Artists, among others. She also exhibited extensively throughout her career with several successful shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Salmagundi Club on Fifth Avenue in New York City, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the Long Beach Arts Association, the Oakland Museum, the Montclair Museum, the American Artists Professional League, the Rockport Art Association, and Harvard University. Marian maintained a busy studio at her home on Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester until she was slowed down by Alzheimer’s related dementia in the late 1990’s. Marian died on February 8, 2001, in Needham, MA near her daughter Pam and her family. She was eighty-nine years old.