Anne Wells Munger was clearly influenced by impressionist painters, and as a student at the School of Drawing and Painting of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (after 1901 known as the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) she could have seen canvases by the French masters at the museum. In addition, her instructors were some of the leading figures of American Impressionism. She wintered in Mississippi and often exhibited alongside William Woodward who was known for painting southern landscapes in an impressionist manner.
Born Anne Wells in Springfield, Massachusetts, the artist took her husband’s name, Munger, upon her marriage in 1882. She lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, where, in 1895, Charles Woodbury—well known for his lushly painted seascapes—offered a workshop. In 1900 a work by Munger was on view at the Worcester Art Museum in a show of the Worcester Art Students Club. She also studied at the Art Students League in New York with George de Forest Brush.
Munger spent occasional summers in Provincetown, but enjoyed winters in Pass Christian, Mississippi, and was involved with the local art community there. She regularly exhibited her picturesque and opulently colorful canvases with the Gulf Coast Art Association, of which Woodward was a founding member and the organization’s first president. In 1926 her scene of New Orleans was included in a Southern States Art League exhibition held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, alongside examples by Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, John Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Elizabeth White. In January 1933, when Woodward resigned as president of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Art Association, Munger took the role of acting president, and later that year was elected president of the organization. Like the well known impressionist painters, Munger successfully depicted atmospheric effects, often employing an internal light source which radiated through her compositions.