Jane Peterson

Jane Peterson (1876–1965) was a graduate of Pratt Institute and an American Impressionist and Expressionist painter. Her works are created in Impressionist and Expressionist styles using broad swaths of vibrant colors to combine an interest in light and in depiction of spontaneous moments and are well known for vivid, rich painted still life, beach scenes along the Massachusetts coast. 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 Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Philadelphia Museum of Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

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 didn't receive any formal art training as a child, but knew intuitively how to paint everything she saw. As a child she attended public school

Peterson taught in Elmira, New York, as a drawing supervisor of public school teachers in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Maryland Institute in Baltimore for three years. In 1907, she extended her artistic career by taking a grand tour in Europe,[5] visiting England, Holland, France and Italy, which was the best way for her to learn from the masters as a young artist. Peterson gained expert knowledge for painting techniques and composition from Frank Brangwyn in Venice and London, Joaquin Sorolla in Madrid, and Jacques Blanche and Andre L' Hote in Paris. She was living during the time of Fauvism, Expressionism, Impressionism, and at the beginning of Cubism.

Peterson started to exhibit her works in 1908 at the Societe des Artistes Francais in Paris France. She exhibited at the St. Botolph Club in Boston, Massachusetts, the Knoedler Gallery in New York City, and at the Bendann's Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. From 1910 to 1914 Peterson had her own exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. She also participated in many group shows such as the American Watercolor Society and the New York Society of Painters both in New York City and the Baltimore Watercolor Club in Maryland.

In 1912 Peterson started teaching watercolor at the Art Students League and became the Drawing Supervisor of the Brooklyn Public Schools. In 1916 she joined Louis Comfort Tiffany for a transcontinental painting exhibition in his private railway car. Peterson traveled widely, painting from Maine to Florida and as far north as British Columbia. Her 1930’s oil painting “Florida Mangroves” is in the permanent collection of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida.

She annually visited Europe and spent six months in Turkey in 1924.

Two of Peterson's famous works are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Parade was created with gouache, watercolor, charcoal, and graphite on paper, and Turkish Fountain with Garden (from Louis C. Tiffany Estate, Oyster Bay) created with oil and charcoal on canvas, in 1910. 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).