Van Rensselaer was born in New York to George and Lydia (Alley) Griswold, a wealthy merchant family. She studied in Europe, especially in Dresden, where she met Schuyler Van Rensselaer, whom she married in 1873. They lived in New Brunswick, New Jersey until his death in 1884, and Mariana moved back to New York.

She publiched poems, texts about art, and critics about artists in both magazines and books.

Van Rensselaer died in New York.

Awards

• Honorary doctor of literature at Columbia University (1910)
• Gold medal by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1923)

Works

• Book of American Figure Painters (1886)
• American Etchers (1886)
• Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works (1888)
• Six Portraits (1889)
• English Cathedrals (1892)
• Art Out of Doors (1893)
• Shall We Ask for Suffrage? (1894)
• One Man Who Was Content (1897)
• History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century (1909)
• Poems (1910)
• Many Children (1921)

External links

• Britannica biography
• Biography