Painting Life Stories: Jane Peterson, Painter

When I first saw Jane Peterson’s paintings, I immediately fell in love with them. I soon learned why her work appealed to me. Her unique Post-Impressionist style was derived from direct study or association with many of the leading bravura and avant-garde painters in the early years of the 20^th Century – painters that I also love, including Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, who had the most profound influence on her work. She traveled to Madrid in the summer of 1909 to work with the great Spanish Impressionist. He urged her to paint with brilliant color, and she eagerly accepted his advice. In 1910, again at Sorolla’s encouragement, Peterson went by herself on a painting expedition to Egypt and Algiers, a daring move for a woman painter traveling alone. In December of that year she firmly established her reputation as a major American Post-Impressionist with a large solo exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Before studying with Sorolla, she had studied with Frank Brangwyn in London and Jacques-Emile Blanche in Paris, both exceptional bravura painters themselves. Peterson’s friends and colleagues included Maurice Prendergast, who painted many of the same subjects she painted early on, John Singer Sargent and Childe Hassam.

Jane Peterson about 1928

Peterson, born Jennie Christine Peterson in Elgin, Illinois in 1876, began her career as a public school art teacher after studies at Pratt Institute with Arthur Wesley Dow and The Art Students League with Frank Vincent DuMond. But she found teaching in public schools a bit dull, and in the summer of 1907 she made her first trip to Europe in the company of Henry Snell, one of her teachers at Pratt, and his artist wife. When the couple returned to America, Peterson stayed behind. This strong, independent woman seemed to meet everybody she wanted to in the art world and travel anywhere she liked to paint on her own -- Brittany, Venice, Egypt, Turkey, you name it, she was game -- from 1908 to 1925, the most adventurous years of her long career.

In Paris, Peterson stayed in Montparnasse, the district that attracted artists from all over the world because studios were plentiful and cheap. She lived right around the corner from Gertrude Stein’s salon and was a regular at the gatherings hosted by Gertrude and her brother Leo, whose other guests included Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Andre Derain and many other important modern artists and art lovers. For many years, Peterson made annual summer trips to Europe, except during the years of America’s involvement in World War I. In America she painted at the popular artists’ colonies of Gloucester, Massachusetts; Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard; and Ogunquit, Maine. She worked in oils, gouache and watercolor. The fast-drying medium of gouache allowed her to quickly experiment with broad strokes of color when working en plein air. Between 1913 and 1919, Peterson was a watercolor instructor at the Art Students League. During World War I, she painted war-oriented subjects for the benefit of Liberty Loans and the American Red Cross.

Her routine changed abruptly in 1925 when she married Moritz Bernard Philipp, a prominent corporate attorney 25 years her senior. She divided her time between their townhouse at 1007 Fifth Avenue, across the street from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Rocky Hill, Philipp’s summer retreat in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A sixth floor was added to the Fifth Avenue townhouse for her use as a studio. She began cultivating flowers, and for the rest of her career she concentrated on painting brightly colored floral still lifes in direct attacks on canvas with bold brushwork.

Turkish Garden from Tiffany Estate

She had always loved painting flowers and flower gardens. In 1911, she had accepted Louis Comfort Tiffany’s invitation to paint his magnificent gardens at Laurelton Hall, Oyster Bay, New York. She spent several months painting there, and went on painting excursions with him, as well. I imagine that this opportunity came about because of her studies with Sorolla, who painted Tiffany’s portrait in those gardens that same year.

Regarding her feelings for the flowers she loved to paint, Peterson wrote in the September 1922 issue of “The Garden Magazine” that flowers “scintillate the prismatic hues of the rainbow; they harmonize the pastel shades of the night; they are all that is delicate; all that is lurid, brilliant, bizarre. They are living things with personality and refinement, with delicacy of form and structure, with variety of size and shape, with rhythm and charm of arrangement, with grace and dignity of bearing.” That’s quite a mouthful, but as a painter who loves the challenge of painting ephemeral cut flowers myself, I understand her passion.

At Rocky Hill, Peterson completed many floral, beach, and pier scenes. After her husband’s death in 1929, Peterson resumed her studies and travels abroad. In 1939 she married her second husband, James S. McCarthy, a prominent New Haven physician. They separated within a year, and then divorced. Peterson's hands became crippled with arthritis in the mid-1950s and she painted much less frequently. She spent the last five years of her life with her niece in Kansas, who took care of her until she died on August 14, 1965, at the age of 88. Here are some of the paintings she created in her prime: