Collect: American Art

Note
The American Impressionist and Expressionist painter Jane Peterson is known for her loose brushwork and vibrantly colored landscapes and beach scenes, as well as her vivid floral still lifes. In 1895, Peterson attended Pratt Institute in New York, which she had first learned about while attending the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Shortly after graduating, she travelled throughout Europe, where she studied under some of the greatest artists of the time, including from Frank Brangwyn in Venice and London, Joaquin Sorolla in Madrid, and Jacques Blanche and Andre L' Hote in Paris.

Peterson began to exhibit her paintings in 1908 at the Societe des Artistes Francais in Paris, France, and, upon her return to the United States, continued to show her work at important institutions such as the Knoedler Gallery in New York City, Bendann's Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, and at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. She was also involved in many group shows, including with the American Watercolor Society, New York and the New York Society of Painters, as well as with the Baltimore Watercolor Club in Maryland. By 1912, Peterson was teaching watercolor at both the Art Students League in New York and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and became the Drawing Supervisor of the Brooklyn Public Schools later that year.

Peterson frequently travelled, both nationally and internationally, and became close friends with Louis Comfort Tiffany, the founder of the Tiffany&Co., with whom she embarked on a transcontinental painting expedition in 1916. She was also closely linked with several influential American artists at this time, including Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, and Childe Hassam. In 1925, The New York Times characterized Peterson as “one of the foremost women painters in New York”.

Today, her works are held by prominent private and public collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the San Diego Museum of Art.