Born in Todwick, Yorkshire, Mary Ethel Hunter was the eldest child of Rev Henry Rudd Hunter and his wife Hannah. Her father had come from the Penrith area of the Lake District, and the familiarity with the region influenced her frequent choice of landscape subject, and her later purchase of a home there with her younger sister, Margaret. She did not marry.

In her late twenties she studied in Newlyn and Penzance, became a friend of Dod PROCTER, and exhibited at NAG. Later she studied in Paris. Upon return to England, she worked as an art mistress at St Albans (J&G). Her addresses were Dublin, Ripon and London.  She exhibited primarily in London from her home in Ripon, Yorkshire, but infrequently elsewhere.

Wood (erroneously) in Victorian Painters continues to conflate her name and artistic career with that of Mary, Mrs John Young Hunter (who exhibited between 1900-14 and never studied in Cornwall). These two artists are separate and should not be confused.