Born in New York City on February 21, 1851, Mariana Griswold was of a prosperous mercantile family and was educated privately at home and in Europe. In April 1873 she married Schuyler Van Rensselaer, an engineer and son of one of New York╒s old Dutch families, with whom she lived in New Brunswick, New Jersey, until his death in 1884. Her writing career began with the publication of a poem in Harper╒s Magazine and an article on art in American Architect and Building, both in 1876.
Other articles and reviews of contemporary artists followed, and in 1886, two years after she moved back to New York City, she published her Book of American Figure Painters. Her American Etchers appeared in the same year. Her series on ╥Recent American Architecture╙ in the Century Magazine gave rise to her full-length study Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works, 1888, long the standard work on that major figure. Her clear and incisive writings on architecture won her election as an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in 1890. In 1889 she published Six Portraits, a set of studies of Renaissance and modern artists. Another Century series of 1887╨1892 was collected in English Cathedrals, 1892. A series for Garden and Forest magazine entitled ╥The Art of Gardening: A Historical Sketch╙ was a pioneering work and led to her Art Out of Doors, 1893. The Society of Landscape Artists also elected her to honorary membership.
From 1894 Van Rensselaer╒s interests turned to social questions. She taught a class in literature at the University Settlement from 1894 to 1898 and served as president of the settlement╒s women╒s auxiliary in 1896╨1898. She was a public school inspector for two years and president of the Public Education Association of New York City from 4899 to 1906, and she led a campaign to have reproductions of great works of art hung in schoolrooms. Her later writings included Shall We Ask for Suffrage?, a pamphlet in which she answered in the negative, 1894; One Man Who Was Content, a collection of stories, 1897; a two-volume History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century, a monumental work that won her an honorary degree from Columbia University, 1909; a volume of Poems, 1910; and Many Children, a collection of poems for children, 1921. In 1923 she was awarded a gold medal by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in New York City on January 20, 1934.
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