Although she moved from her native France to the United States with her American husband in 1919, Maria Finkelstein—trained at the École des Beaux-Arts—continued to exhibit her work at the Paris Salon in 1928 and 1930 and in shows for women artists at the Grand Palais in Paris from 1914 to 1929. Her work was also included in Maryland exhibitions throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Finkelstein was a watercolorist by training, and her solo shows in Baltimore at the Friends of Art House often included floral still-life paintings. This rendering of a seated woman deep in thought was exhibited at the Fifth Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture at The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in 1937. It was promptly purchased by the Municipal Art Society, which later gifted it to the BMA. Although she was once an integral part of Baltimore’s artistic circle, little has been discovered or documented about Finkelstein.