Jane Peterson (American, 1876–1965) had an individualistic style, with bold color combinations and unique designs, and her canvases mix Fauvist and Impressionist tendencies with academic drawing. Peterson, born Jennie Christine in Elgin, IL, grew up in poverty. From her earliest years, Peterson drew from nature and took art lessons at the Elgin Public Schools. In 1895, she went to New York City to study art at the Pratt Institute. Before graduating in 1901, Peterson taught painting and became a popular teacher at Pratt.

She then became the drawing supervisor of Brooklyn Public Schools, and studied oil painting with Frank Vincent Dumond, as she saved money to travel abroad to study painting with Frank Brangwyn in London, Jacques Emile Blanche in Paris, and the eminent Joaquin Sorolla in Madrid.

Internationally known writer and astronomer Percival Lowell exhibited Peterson’s work in Paris, and secured her first solo exhibition in Boston, which led to a near sell-out exhibition in New York City. By 1912, Peterson had many rich patrons, and she taught watercolor painting at the Art Students League in New York City, and at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore.

Peterson became associated with an influential group of artists, traveling and painting with Sorolla, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, and Maurice Prendergast.

During World War I, Peterson painted war-oriented subjects that were exhibited and sold (or donated) to promote Liberty Loans and the American Red Cross efforts. In 1924, Peterson’s Toilette received rave reviews at the New York Society of Painters, and a solo show on Fifth Avenue sold out. By this time, she had won numerous awards, was a Fellow at the National Academy of Design, and a member of many art clubs, including the American Watercolor Society, Audubon Artists, Pen & Brush Club, and the National Association of Women Artists.

In 1925, The New York Times characterized Peterson as one of the foremost women painters in New York. Known for her colorful, post-impressionistic paintings of Gloucester streets and harbors on Cape Ann, palm trees along the Florida coast, street scenes in Paris, Istanbul, and New York City, and boating views in Venice, Italy, Peterson also flamboyantly executed floral subjects and dynamic genre-like-portraits. She was given over 80 solo exhibitions over the course of her career, and was recognized as a uniquely talented painter of distinction before her death in 1965.