Mary (Polly) Riley Hitchner de Moll

November 7, 1884 - August 30, 1974

American artist Mary Riley Hitchner de Moll grew up in Bridgeton, New Jersey, the second of five children of Edgar Janvier Hitchner and Arabella Lawrence Riley.  Her father was a superintendent of the public schools.

Mary studied art at Drexel University, graduating in 1905 with first prize for illustration, followed by study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where, upon graduation, she was awarded a Cresson/Crescent Traveling Fellowship which carried with it the necessary funds to study abroad.

In May 1907, Mary was hired to take charge of illustrating for Lit Brothers Department Store. Two years later, she was working steadily as an advertising illustrator for the Ladies’ Home Journal. She also illustrated at least 1 children’s book during this period. Mary traveled to Europe in June 1912, studying in Paris and Florence.

By 1913, Mary began to appear in Philadelphia City Directories, listed as an artist, with a studio at the Art and Crafts Guild at 11th and Locust Streets. She was a member of the Plastic Club and the Sketch Club, where she met her husband, Carl de Moll, a Philadelphia architect and fellow artist/illustrator.

After her marriage in 1916, Mary began to concentrate on portrait painting, primarily in oils, some of the works were miniatures painted on ivory. In 1923, her work was featured at the Philadelphia Plastic Club in an exhibit titled “the work of prominent women artists.”

She exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and in galleries in Philadelphia and New York. One of her paintings, a water-color miniature portrait of Mrs. Howell Tracey Fisher, c. 1924, is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, accepted there in 1956 as part of a collection presented by the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters.

Mary stopped painting professionally in or around 1924, by which time she had three young children.

Mary and Carl de Moll lived initially at 282 W. Rittenhouse St. in Germantown, Pennsylvania with Carl’s mother, Josephine, and a son from his first marriage, Carl, Jr. Mary and Carl’s daughter Charlotte was born in 1917, and Edgar a year later. Sadly, Edgar died of meningitis when he was 16 months old,

and this loss seems to have had a profound effect on his mother. John was born in 1922 and Louis in 1924. As son Louis later wrote, “four children in 7 years, the death of a first son, and all the while dealing with an in-house mother-in-law and teenage step-son — it was not easy.”

In the early 1920’s the family moved, with Josephine and Carl Jr., to Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. There, Mary became a member of the Swarthmore Friends Meeting located at Swarthmore College. She lived in Swarthmore until the late 1960’s, where she was an active member of the Meeting and other community organizations. During the Depression, she helped organize a cooperative grocery in the family's basement, where member families could pool their resources to buy in bulk and even trade goods and services. This same "Co-Op" grocery store still exists in Swarthmore today.

— from Lauren de Moll’s book, “The Family History of Lane, Cathy, Kip, Lauren and Meg de Moll

Mary de Moll’s husband Carl de Moll was a gifted illustrator and architect, and her son Louis de Moll was an architect and watercolor painter, focusing primarily on scenes from Philadelphia and the coast of Maine.