In 1874, at the age of 26, Lilla married Thomas Sargeant Perry, a brilliant linguist and literary critic, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, and the great-nephew of Commodore Matthew Perry. For the next 10 years the couple moved easily among Boston’s intellectuals – including writers Henry James and William Dean Howells and the painter John LaFarge – who frequently gathered at the Perry home. By the age of 36 Lilla Perry had three young daughters. Only then, in 1884, did she begin to train professionally for a career as an artist. Early in 1886 she wrote to a friend, “I am hard at work at painting . . . I feel that I am improving fast and that is a delightful feeling! I told Tom the other day that he must not be offended if I said that I had not been so happy since I was a girl at school!”
Many American artists and writers relocated to Paris in the late 19th century, including the Perry family. By the winter of 1887 Lilla was enrolled in art classes at the Academie Colarossi. The Perrys traveled frequently, which enabled Lilla to study and copy Old Master paintings throughout Europe. The summer of 1889 found the family back in France, and Lilla attended an exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris. Here she encountered Impressionism for the first time, in more than 100 works by Claude Monet. Lilla was so inspired by Monet’s loose brushwork, bright colors, and light-filled canvases that she moved her family to Giverny, where Monet lived and worked. When the Perrys returned to Boston at the end of the summer, Lilla held a small exhibition of Monet’s work in her home. Few of the artists and writers she invited to see the work could comprehend the indistinct forms and dabs of paint, however, and most were not impressed. Undaunted, Lilla began to incorporate Monet’s techniques into her own art, and over the next 20 years the Perrys spent many summers in Giverny. Lilla became close friends with the older artist and later published her reminiscences of him in The American Magazine of Art.
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