Mai Rogers Coe was a patron of artist Everett Shinn, and commissioned him to execute decorative works for her bathroom and Tea House at Planting Fields. Everett Shinn is perhaps best known for being one of “The Eight,” eight artists including George Luks and Robert Henri that introduced the world to Social Realism. Also called “The Ashcan School” because of the images of street life they portrayed in a rough, realistic style, the artists of The Eight were considered very avante garde and their exhibition in 1907-1908 had a great impact on the world of art. Shinn drifted away from the Ashcan school and concentrated on interior design and theatre. Shinn was a man of many talents. As an artist he got his start doing charcoal sketches for papers like New York World and Harper’s Weekly. Shinn exhibited and Ladies on a Swing, c. 1921 studied art in Paris and London. Like Robert Chanler, Shinn brought his artwork to the emerging profession of interior decorating. His contacts in the art world connected him with jet setter and decorator Elsie de Wolfe, and architect Stanford White. Since 1900, Shinn painted several murals for houses built by White and for many houses and apartments decorated by jet setter Elsie de Wolfe. Everett Shinn was not merely a society artist, he was a known personality and figure in his time. Both in Mai Coe’s Bathroom and in her Tea House, Shinn employs a Rococo revivalism technique, a more classical style featuring sometimes risqué images of 19th century French court life. The Tea House was completed in 1916 and was the result of a close collaboration between de Wolfe, Shinn, and Mai Coe. Upon its completion, Town & Country published photographs and an article about the Tea House’s decorative “face lift.” 1924, Arts & Decoration magazine praised the decorative panels Shinn executed for Mrs. Coe’s Bathroom. The decorations were probably completed the previous year. Each panel bore several figures in the French Louis XVI period painted in the Rococo revivalist style with pastel colors. Most of the panels were also draped with a painted blue velvet canopy.