Mayna Treanor Avent (1868-1959)
Mayna Treanor Avent was the daughter of Thomas O. and Mary Andrews Treanor. She was born Sept. 17. 1868 at Tulip Grove Mansion, across the Lebanon Pike in Nashville from Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. Study at Cincinnati was followed by two years at the Academie Julien in Paris. In 1891 she married Frank Avent, a Murfreesboro attorney who later served as State Railroad Commissioner for many years. He died in 1941.
Avent taught painting in Nashville for many years and exhibited throughout the US. She painted in Mass. and SC, as well as TN. She produced oil and watercolor paintings, occasional drawings, and wood block prints in the Japanese manner. She was a member of the Nashville Studio Club, the Nashville Artists Guild, and the Centennial club, which in 1951 held a retrospective of her 68 year artistic career. She spent her last 3 years with her son in Sewanee, TN, where she died on Jan. 2, 1959.
An anecdote of Avent’s early life recounts how she was given an armful of magnolias and decided to paint them at once. Finding no unused canvas about, she removed a wooden door panel and painted on it, later explaining “Magnolias just won’t wait!” Besides still lifes, her favorite subjects were landscapes, especially TN wheatfields, and negro studies..
from “The South on Paper: Line, Color and Light” By James C. Kelly, p. 22
