Jane Peterson

Jane Peterson (1876–1965) was an American Impressionist and Expressionist painter. Her works use broad swaths of vibrant colors to combine an interest in light and in the depiction of spontaneous moments. She painted still lives, beach scenes along the Massachusetts coast, and scenes from her extensive travels. Her works are housed in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a fellow of the National Academy of Design and taught at the Art Students League from 1913 to 1919. During her lifetime, Peterson was featured in more than 80 one-woman exhibitions.

Biography

Early life

Peterson was born in Elgin, Illinois, on November 28, 1876, as the daughter of an Elgin Watch Company employee and a homemaker. Though she was born as Jennie Christine, she changed her name to Jane right after she graduated from high school, in 1894. She did not receive any formal art training as a child.

In 1907, she extended her artistic career by taking a grand tour in Europe, providing an opportunity to learn from the masters. Travel abroad Like many young artists of her time, Peterson took several grand tours of the European continents, starting in 1907, and studied under several famous European artists, including Frank Brangwyn in Venice and London, Joaquin Sorolla in Madrid, and Jacques-Émile Blanche and André Lhote in Paris. While in Paris, Peterson also became friends with American writer Gertrude Stein and art collector and critic Leo Stein, becoming a regular at the siblings' various gatherings where the guests included Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. She lived in rooms in Montparnasse located around the corner from Gertrude Stein's salon, where on Saturday evening artists and art enthusiasts would gather to view and discuss Stein's seminal collection of modern art. During her time in Paris, Peterson was surrounded by Fauvism, Expressionism, Impressionism, and the beginnings of Cubism. When she first arrived in Paris in 1907 Picasso was already paving the way with innovative and experimental techniques, displaying Fauvist tendencies and going beyond them.

In 1910, Peterson travelled alone to Egypt and Algiers in North Africa – an extremely bold act for a woman in the early 20th century. In Boston, Massachusetts, she had a position as a drawing supervisor of public school teachers, and also taught at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. In 1912, Peterson started teaching watercolor at the Art Students League and became the Drawing Supervisor of the Brooklyn Public Schools. Four years after her husband's death, she married New Haven physician James S. McCarty in 1939. Their marriage lasted for less than a year. Her trips with Tiffany inspired her work: In 1916, Peterson joined Tiffany in a painting adventure and expedition to Alaska and the Canadian Northwest. and Turkish Fountain with Garden (from Louis C. Tiffany Estate, Oyster Bay) created with oil and charcoal on canvas, in 1910. Venetian Summer was painted in oil on canvas. Marché aux Fleurs, oil on canvas, painted while in Paris in 1908, is held in the Terra Foundation Collection . The Floats was appraised on PBS' Antiques Roadshow in October 2014. She was selected as the most outstanding individual of the year for her artistic achievement by the American Historical Society in 1938. During World War II she produced four portraits representing women in each branch of the military. These portraits were auctioned for $211,000 to build a war memorial. Her works were featured in Jane Peterson: At Home and Abroad, shown in 2018 at the Columbia Museum of Art, the Mattatuck Museum, the Long Island Museum of Art, and the Hyde Collection (Glens Falls, New York).