Referred to by Mark Spanner on the Arte website as "perhaps the first woman to prove marriage and family were not insurmountable to success.

[2] She completed roughly 70 landscape etchings, which included scenes of England and Scotland, as well as Long Island, New York; New Jersey, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

[5] Born in Scotland, she immigrated to the United States at the age of five with her widowed father and brother; they settled in Philadelphia.

The town of Strathaven was one of many where hand-loomed and colorful wools from weavers were the main source of livelihood for the community.

Following, the death of her mother in 1847, when Mary was five, her father, Archibald, took her and her brother with him to the United States, settling in Crescentville, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1858.

They moved throughout Italy and some of the places they stayed or visited were Rome, Florence, Bologna, and Milan, and sketched Lake Como.

[8] She made most of her etchings on location near her various homes, as responsibilities to her growing family strongly limited her travel.

[6] The New York Etching Club invited the Morans to submit their artwork for an American presentation at the international exhibition of the newly organized Royal Society of the Painter-Etchers.

[2] In 1881, she was invited along with her husband to become a member of the Royal Society of Painters and Etchers of Great Britain and she was able to exhibit and showcase her work.

[2][3] Her prints were recognized for their boldness and originality and were collected by the British critic John Ruskin among others.

The Moran home in East Hampton became the center of a productive artists' colony and is today designated as a National Historic Landmark.

[2] Fifty-four of her etchings were presented in a Mammoth Exhibition of Women Printmakers at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from November 1 through December 31, 1887.

[5] Nimmo Moran exhibited her work at the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

[12] In summer 1950, her etchings were presented at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.[5] Moran died of typhoid fever on September 25, 1899, aged 57, after nursing her daughter Ruth through the disease.