Mary Cecil Allen (2 September 18937 April 1962) was an Australian artist, writer and lecturer. She lived most of her adult life in America, where she was known as Cecil Allen. Allen initially painted landscapes and portraits in her early career, but changed to modernist styles including cubism from the 1930s. In 1927 Allen lectured at New York City venues including the Metropolitan Museum, Columbia University and other institutions. She was sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation. Allen wrote two books of art criticism, The Mirror of the Passing World (1928) and Painters of the Modern Mind (1929), based on her lectures. In 1930 Allen curated the first exhibition of Australian art in New York, "First Contemporary All-Australian Art Exhibition", at the Roerich Museum. During her lectures and talks in Australia, she helped introduce the ideas of modernism to Melbourne women and artists. After living in New York, from 1949 Allen lived in Provincetown at its art colony. Her cubist style painting, "Sea, studio: Winter", was presented in that year. She died in 1962, at the colony, from "sinus arrest, cause unknown" (see sinoatrial arrest). Early life and training Allen was the daughter of Harry Brookes Allen (1854–1926), a pathologist and medical administrator, and Ada Rosalie Elizabeth, née Mason (1862–1933), a community worker. She and her sisters, Edith Margaret and Beatrice (Biddy), spent their childhood living in a staff house at the University of Melbourne where their father was an anatomy professor and the Dean of Medicine. Her father was knighted in 1914. Allen qualified to study a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, but decided to study under Fred McCubbin at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School instead, entering the faculty of arts in 1910. From 1912 to 1913 Allen studied at the Slade School of Fine Art when she and her family moved to England. She returned to NGV Art School during 1913–17. Early work: 1920s Allen was a member of Australian Art Association, the Victorian Artists' Society and the Twenty Melbourne Painters during the 1920s and her exhibitions of landscapes and portrait paintings were well received by the Melbourne art world. She was also a member of society, being friends with Ivy Brookes (daughter of Alfred Deakin) and having Dame Nellie Melba and University Vice-Chancellor Sir John Grice open some of her exhibitions. Two of Allen's portraits were finalists in the Archibald Prize in 1921