PUERTO || Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Jane Peterson (American painter) 1876 - 1965
Fishing Boat at a Mooring, s.d.
oil on canvas
61 x 76.2 cm. (24 x 30 in.)
signed Jane Peterson (lower left)
private collection

Catalogue Note Sotheby's sale American Paintings, Drawing and Sculpture, 9 June 2016, Lot 23
The harbor depicted in the composition is probably that of Gloucester, Massachusetts, one of the artist's most celebrated subjects.

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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.ref name=foxvalleyarts"Fox Valley Arts Hal of Fame". Retrieved 4 February 2015./ref She didn't receive any formal art training as a child, but knew intuitively how to paint everything she saw.
Peterson married a corporate lawyer M. Bernard Philipp, when she was fifty years old. After four years of her husband's death, she married to a New Haven physician James S. McCarty in 1939. Their marriage life only lasted for less than a year.
During her lifetime, Peterson was featured in more than 80 one-woman exhibitions before her death on August 14, 1965.

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, 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 Brangwn 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 Bandann'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 travelled widely, painting from Maine to Florida and as far north as British Columbia. She annually visited Europe and spent six months in Turkey in 1924.