Little is known about Marian Greene Barney's artistic career. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and studied with Cecilia Beaux, Violet Oakley, Emil Carlsen, and Philip Leslie Hale. All of these teachers were instructing at PAFA in the early twentieth century. Carlsen and Oakley both stopped teaching at the Academy in 1918 and 1917, respectively, so it stands to reason that Barney had completed her studies by 1917.

Like so many women who began careers in the arts in the early twentieth century, Barney seems to have foregone painting when she was married and became Mrs. W. Pope. Many women artists spoke of the demands of marriage, children, and running a household and how they were incompatible with a career in the arts. It's no surprise then that such very successful artists as Cecilia Beaux, Mary Cassatt, and Jessie Willcox Smith, to name only a few, never married or had children.

During Barney's short career she was a fellow at PAFA, exhibited at the Philadelphia Art Alliance and at McClees Galleries. The old McClees label on the back of Portrait of a Young Girl clearly means it was exhibited there. The age of the label, based on visual comparisons to other McClees labels, seems to indicate that this was the label being used in the early twentieth century, so it's likely that Barney herself consigned the painting to McClees Galleries to sell.

The biographical information included here was gathered from Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975.