In 1934, the abstract painter Alice Trumbull Mason wrote a letter to her sister, Margaret Jennings, noting that she was eager to resume painting, which she had temporarily left to raise her children.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that when Mason returned to painting a year after writing that letter, earlier than she had anticipated, she did not paint her children or scenes from home life; rather, she became a founding member of the New York-based American Abstract Artists, joining a group of artists experimenting with an art form more widespread in Europe, but largely rejected by critics and curators in the past.