Mary Augusta Mullikin
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Mary Augusta Mullikin | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 20, 1874 Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Died | February 11, 1964 (aged 89) Austin, Texas |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work | The Nine Sacred Mountains of China with Anna Hotchkis |
Mary Augusta Mullikin (born 1874 in Ohio; died 1964) was an American painter who spent almost 30 years in China from 1920 to the end of World War II. Member of the American Federation of Art. Joint author with Anna Hotchkis, also a painter, of two books of their travels in China, illustrated by themselves, entitled Buddhist Sculptures of the Yun Kang Caves (Librairie française, Peiping, 1935) and The Nine Sacred Mountains of China (Vetch and Lee, Hong Kong, 1973). She also contributed to the National Geographic Magazine a number of articles accompanied by her drawings, including "China's Great Wall of Sculpture" in the March 1938 National Geographic (pp 313–348) on the earliest Buddhist sculptures in what were known as the Yun Kang caves, and "Tài Shan, Sacred Mountain of the East" in June 1945. Her paintings and drawings were also featured in exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and at the Philadelphia Academy, as well as in the Brook Street Galleries in London[1] and numerous exhibitions in China.
From 1901 to 1921, she was an Art Professor at Lasell Seminary for Young Women (now Lasell College) in Newton, MA.[2] In 1920 she left Boston for a six-month visit with her elder sister Katherine and Katherine's husband, Edward Kingston Lowry, an export-import merchant and property manager affiliated with the Methodist Mission, in the Lowries' home in Tianjin, China. Mullikin's six-month stay in Tianjin eventually extended to 26 years.
Travels in China
Mullikin travelled widely in China and to Korea and Japan during the 1930s. She published a book via the Librairie française, a Peking publishing firm, on early Buddhist sculptures. She then set to writing a book about the sacred Daoist and Buddhist mountains and travelled an estimated 10,000 kilometres through China.[3][original research?]
Due to health problems Mullikin did not travel again in China. She devoted herself to the care of her sister Katherine. In July 1937 the Japanese occupation began, and Mullikin and the Lowries were trapped in Tianjin until the end of World War II. Turned out of her home, Mullikin survived by staying with Swiss friends, and by painting pictures of Chinese ancestors from old photographs, and by selling property. She was finally repatriated in 1946.
She sold a number of her paintings to members of the International community located in Tianjin, between 1920 and the start of World War II.
