Way was an artistic pioneer in early America. Jaffee calls her "very likely the first professional woman artist in the post-Revolutionary United States"; Baratt and Zabar, "one of the first professional women painters in America". Way's miniatures were primarily in watercolor on ivory, although she also produced some oil paintings. Uniquely, Way "dressed" her miniatures with textiles and other embellishments: "the effect", Ramsay MacMullen observes, as of "a two-dimensional doll". An 1812 advertisement for her work in the New-York Evening Post noted that she "takes Likenesses upon Ivory & Glass, in colours or gold, Landscapes, or views of country Seats, &c. &c". Kelly observes that Way's miniatures did not tend to follow technical developments in the genre, which included a shift to larger formats and brighter colors. Rather, she continued to use a more muted palette throughout her career. She is known to have signed only one painting, of her cousin Charles Holt. Ehrlich suggests that Mary and her sister Elizabeth produced some paintings jointly. Way's subjects included members of her New York church and contacts from her days in New London. One of her pieces purportedly portrays a young Theodosia Burr, and a separate one of her mother Theodosia Bartow Burr. She was acquainted with John Wesley Jarvis, Anson Dickinson, and Samuel Lovett Waldo, among others, who advised her and suggested improvements to her work. In 1818, she was exhibited at the American Academy of the Fine Arts. Way's work was largely unknown until the early 1990s, when it was documented in an article by art historian William Lamson Warren. Ongoing research on available samples, and new details about the composition of dressed miniatures. has been unearthed by Brian Ehrlich. A previously unknown pattern of rare Ipswich lace adorns a figure of Sarah Hamlin Sage. Way's works are held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London; and the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, among other institutions and in the hands of private collectors. An exhibition of the Way sisters' works, with an accompanying catalog, debuted in late 2021. Notes Sources Further reading A chronicle of the Way family, based on their extensive correspondence. 1769 births 1833 deaths 19th-century American painters Painters from Connecticut People from New London, Connecticut Portrait miniaturists