JANE PETERSON

American, 1876-1965

BIOGRAPHY
Jane Peterson wrote in 1922 that her “great and absorbing passion is the love of beauty. Beautiful things give me pleasure and ugly ones pain — they physically hurt me. So I try always to be conscious of the beautiful and ignore the ugly. As fine art is the application of the principle of aesthetics or beauty, painting has especially appealed to me as an outlet” (The Garden Magazine, New York, September 1922).

Jane Peterson studied with Arthur Wesley Dow at the Pratt Institute of Design, New York from 1885 until 1901. “After graduation,” writes Max Gillies, “she taught art and cultivated a group of rich patrons who supported the travels that took her — unmarried, mind you — to England, France, Italy, Balkans, northern Africa, Turkey, and Egypt. Seemingly fearless, Peterson connected with people who could teach her something — from Gertrude Stein (whose Paris salon she visited) to the Spanish master Joaquín Sorolla and the British illustrator-muralist Frank Brangwyn.

“Curtailing her travels only because World War I got in the way, Peterson painted American scenes ranging from New York streets (in neighborhoods poor and privileged) and quaint harbors in Massachusetts to beach parties in Palm Beach and the Long Island gardens of her friend Louis Comfort Tiffany. There were also many images of women, usually seen in reverie or at the dressing table. In 1925, aged 49, Peterson married a widower friend — an older man of means — and from then on, she could truly afford to paint what she liked, and travel where she wished. The exhibition offers glimpses into Peterson’s private life through photographs and archival materials, and concludes with a heady dose of boldly, brilliantly colored floral still lifes.

“Tracing Peterson’s journey, we watch her exploring different approaches, from impressionism to expressionism (including fauvism), from realism to a form of representational abstraction. This evolution reflects what was happening in early 20th-century modernism generally, offering a fresh vantage on an extraordinarily exciting period.” (Max Gillies, “Rediscovering Jane Peterson,” Fine Art Connoisseur, March-April, 2018m, pp. 72-75).

The artist taught at the Art Students League in New York from 1914 to 1919 and at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. Between 1910 and 1930 Peterson showed her work in more than 100 exhibitions. In 2001 her oil Marché aux Fleurs (1908) was shown in the exhibition L'Héroïque et le Quotidien: les Artistes Américains, 1820-1920 at the Musée d'Art Américain in Giverny. Her work was also included in the exhibition American Seascapes: Artists on the Shore at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida in 2004.

Museum Collections
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, TN
Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington, IN
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Hirshorn Museum, Washington, DC
Housatonic Museum, Bridgeport, CT
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN
Ipswich Museum, Ipswich, MA
Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY
Manning Center for the Arts, Endicott College, Beverly, MA
Mariners’ Museum and Park, Newport News, VA
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Florida History, Tallahassee, FL
Museum of the City of New York, New York
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fl
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
Richmond Art Museum, Richmond, IN
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT
Westerly Museum of American Impressionism, Westerly, RI
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

Mark Murray Fine Paintings is a New York gallery specializing in buying and selling 19th century and early 20th century artwork.

Please contact us if you are interested in selling your Jane Peterson paintings or other artwork from the 19th century and early 20th century. 

JANE PETERSON
Paintings for sale

Jane Peterson Paintings Previously Sold