Mary Agnes Yerkes, (/ˈjɜːrkiːz/ YUR-keez; August 9, 1886 – November 8, 1989), was an American impressionist painter, photographer and artisan.

Her professional career was cut short by the Great Depression, but she still continued to paint well into her nineties with a passion for her craft and nature.

Mary Agnes graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1906, and became an accomplished local artist.

In 1913, her mother commissioned a house, the Mary Greenlees Yerkes Residence from architect John S. Van Bergen.

Where most architects catered to wealthy clients, Van Bergen showed a particular interest in designing for both career women and artists.

The pictures are in oil and pastel and watercolor, and their subjects range from figures to landscape and still life, and from the daintiest spring to drifting winter snows.

[10] "The two Yerkes oils in particular, [Crocker Art Museum], are wonderful examples of California Impressionism, and by a woman, which makes them even more rare.

They toured in their specially modified 1920s Buick which was equipped with extra storage pockets and a canvas sling for an interior bed.

[12] Yerkes, her husband, and their daughter Mary, (nicknamed Min), spent weekends and holidays traveling on dirt roads to explore the inner sanctums of the newly established National Parks.

Extended expeditions took them several times throughout the West and they toured many National Parks including; Crater Lake, Mt Rainier, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Rainbow Bridge and Arches, Mesa Verde, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Yosemite, as well as the Oregon, Washington and California coasts.

She also hooked pictorial rugs, wove fabric for her own clothes and accessories, and carved furniture in the same Southwestern and natural motifs she loved to paint.