Collect: American Art Featuring 'Touching the Sun' - The Collection of Dr. Julian Katz and Dr. Sheila Moriber Katz

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low received her artistic education at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, where she earned a three-year scholarship, and later pursued further studies in Paris at the Académie Julian under Carolus Duran. Married to Frederick MacMonnies for 21 years, she divorced him in 1909 and remarried another artist, Will H. Low, later that same year.

In 1892, Low was commissioned to create one of two mural tympana for the interior of the Woman’s Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, held in 1893. Her mural, titled "Primitive Woman," was positioned opposite Mary Cassatt's "Modern Woman" and was widely regarded as the more successful of the two.

This artwork was originally created for and presented at the American Artists' Committee of One Hundred Auction in 1917. This auction was part of a relief effort initiated by New York painters and sculptors to support the families of French soldier-artists, primarily through the sale of artworks and donations. Established and based in the American Fine Arts Society Building in New York in 1914, the organization's initial appeal for funds attracted the support of sixty artists. Eventually, the Committee expanded its membership to over one hundred and seventy individuals and adopted the name “The American Artist’s Committee of the One Hundred.” Beginning in 1915, the committee held exhibitions and auctions in collaboration with the Fraternité des artistes in Paris, which proved to be financially successful. In the preface of the 1917 exhibition catalogue, Committee Chairman William A. Cofflin praised the caliber of works featured in the show, stating that “the names are the best in American art and the examples are representative”. Notable artists participating in the auction along side Low included Lord Frederick Leighton, Harry Leith-Ross, and Jane Peterson.