Jane Peterson (1876 - 1965). Jane Peterson 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 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 1913-1919. During her lifetime, Peterson was featured in more than 80 one-woman exhibitions. 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. At the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, she learned about the Pratt Institute, a fairly new technical school in Brooklyn, New York, and took an art aptitude test. She was accepted in the art department at Pratt in 1895 and Peterson borrowed $300 from her mother to study there. In 1901 she graduated and went on to study oil and watercolor painting at the Art Students League in New York City with Frank DuMond. In 1907, she extended her artistic career by taking a grand tour in Europe, visiting England, Holland, France and Italy, providing an opportunity to learn from the masters. Peterson gained expert knowledge for painting techniques and composition from Like many young artists of her time, Jane 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 Blanche and Andre L' Hote 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 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 visited Europe annually and spent six months in Turkey in 1924. Shortly after graduation from Pratt in 1901, Peterson was appointed Supervisor of Drawing in Elmira, New York. 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. In 1925 at age 50, Peterson married a corporate lawyer, M. Bernard Philipp. Following her marriage, she spent summers in Ipswich, MA, and travelled less often. She had the opportunity to study and paint flowers, writing a book, Flower Painting, in 1946. A solo exhibit at the Newhouse Galleries in New York featured her floral paintings. 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. Peterson died on August 14, 1965, on a trip to join a niece in Kansas. In 1907, she studied with the Welsh artist Frank Brangwyn in Venice and London, Joaquin Sorolla in Madrid, and painter Jacques Blanche and sculptor Andre L'Hote in Paris. Under their guidance she gained a diverse and expert knowledge of painting techniques and composition.