Jane Peterson's Star on the Rise

 Annamaria on Monday

I first wrote here about Jane Peterson in 2015, both because she was woman adventurist and because she was a much under-appreciated American Impressionist painter.

That first post was discovered by a researcher looking for Peterson's paintings in private hands, hoping to find some to be included in the first Peterson retrospective exhibition in 40 years. As it turned out, the curators took four of the five Peterson's in the collection that my dear-departed husband and I had amassed over many years. When that exhibition opened, I wrote another post in 2017, in which I rejoiced that Jane Peterson was finally beginning to get her to due.

My two pictures, as displayed at the 2017 exhibition, lower left and right

I am delighted to say that painters of the past who were not white men are now, at last, beginning to be appreciated for the artistic value of their work.

Here's a closer look at "Venetian Lagoon" by Jane Peterson

A wonderful example of this trend: the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, New York is mounting, this coming summer, an exhibition which will include some of the paintings from my collection. Here is what the museum website says about the exhibition:

Unmasking Venice: American Artists and the City of Water

May 28 – September 5, 2022

Unmasking Venice: American Artists and the City of Water features paintings, etchings and 3-dimensional objects that explore the two Venetian worlds depicted by American artists during the late 19th, early 20th and 21st centuries. The “picturesque” demonstrates the attraction to Venice felt by American tourists, while the “realistic” depicts the grittier realism of an everyday Venetian’s life. The exhibition includes work by a diverse group of artists, including Jane Peterson and Fred Wilson, and draws some interesting Venetian connections to the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art through the glass industry. A catalog will accompany the exhibition.

 

Sponsored in part by The Clark Foundation, Nellie and Robert Gipson, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas O. Putnam.

 

This is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.

I was particularly struck by the inclusion of Jane Peterson's name as one of the brags about the works to be shown.  Little by little, Jane is finally garnering well-deserved adulation.

This exhibition will include two of the Petersons that I own, as well as a picture by another wonderful woman artist – Helen Nicolay, who is still under-appreciated, but now will be getting some attention by her inclusion in this show.

Helen Nicolay (1866-1954) was born in Paris, where her father John George Nicolay was the United States Consul. He eventually became Abraham Lincoln's private secretary. After Lincoln's assassination, John Nicolay wrote an exhaustive, 12 – volume biography of Lincoln. Helen served is his secretary in this effort. It is believed that she was heavily involved in drafting the 11th volume because her father became ill. And that she completed his effort by writing the 12th volume largely on her own. Besides being a marvelous painter, she was also an author in her own right. Twenty titles are shown with their cover art on the website dedicated to her history.

She painted many exotic and fascinating places while traveling with her father after Lincoln's death. I have the privilege of owning two. This one of the Aswan souk in Egypt:

My photo of the water color taken "though a glass, darkly."

The one in the exhibit will be, of course, of Venice. Here is "Arcade of the Ducal Palace, Venice by Helen Nicolay:

Photo: Josh Nefsky

I am looking forward to attending the opening reception for the exhibit.  All the more so, now that I have seen an image of the cover for the show's catalogue:

Cover art: "The Clocktower, Venice" by Jane Peterson

It is the only painting in our collection that David bought without first discussing the purchase with me.  He surprised me with it on my 51st Birthday.

Now, one of Jane Person's masterworks is being given a great place of honor - at long last the recognition she so richly deserves.

HURRAH!    

Jane Peterson at Home and Abroad

Annamaria on Monday

What you see above is the cover of the catalogue to a fabulous exhibition--the first one-woman retrospective of Jane Peterson's work in forty-five years. You can see it at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut.  I would not have been part of this endeavor if I did not have the huge good fortune of being part of this MIE blog team.

You see, in April of 2015 I posted about one of my favorite artists.  I love her work, and I so admire the adventurous, independent woman she was. David and I discovered Jane Peterson in our search for original American Impressionist art that we could afford. Highly appreciated in the first part of her career, Peterson’s pictures were later eclipsed, with the dawn of abstract art.  While men of her generation—like Childe Hasam, Maurice Prendergast, and William Merrit Chase—remained in the public eye, Jane was one of those massively under appreciated painters who possessed the flaw of being female in a man's world.

And I don't mean that Peterson was just no longer famous.  She has been almost completely unknown.  Consider this: About three years ago, when the Director of the Mattatuck Museum came across two Petersons in an obscure collection in Maine, he--an art expert--had never heard of her.  He emailed his colleague Cynthia Roznoy, a PhD art historian for information about Jane.  She also drew a blank. Reasearch began. And, mirabile dictu, my blog post came up in the ensuing internet search. When Cynthia contacted me, I was thrilled to hear that Peterson might be finally getting the new recognition she deserved. I became an enthusiast for the idea of a retrospective.  Once work on the show was well underway, Roznoy met with a group of us collectors and we became charter members of the New York Chapter of the Jane Peterson Fan Club!

Cynthia Roznoy, with a great deal of passionate work—new scholarship, tracking down works, negotiating loans from collectors and museums, inspiring donors to support the exhibition—brought the project to fabulous fruition. Here are some images from the special preview last Thursday evening. 

Cynthia Roznoy introduced Peterson with this beautiful portrait, which
she described as so like Jane--perched on a chair, with her hat on and
her paint box in her lap, ready to get outside and get to work.

Evening, Holland Fishermen, Volendam, 1907*
The lead off picture in the show was this one, the earliest of her paintings,
a proud moment for me, since it is one of mine and David's.

Here, also ours, is the evidence of Peterson's adventurous spirit.  She traveled alone to Turkey and North Africa in the mid-1920s to paint the exotic scenes she craved.

Street in Old Constantinople, c. 1924*

Here I am with my friend Sid Hauser, fellow founding member of the NYC
Chapter of the fan club. That's his Venetian scene between us, mine and David's on either side.

And here are some better images of our works: 

Venetian Lagoon, c. 1920*

Clock Tower, c. 1920*

*Photographs, Josh Nefsky

In exhibitions like the one just opened at the Mattatuck, I like to fantasize about which works I would take home if I could.  Here (with apologies for my lopsided photography) are the ones I would have spirited away:

This first one because it is of my favorite ghost of New York, as well as being beautiful:

1918 Victory Arch at Madison Square, 1919
Herschel & Adler Galleries, New York

 And this one because it is so gorgeously chic with its dark background, especially in its perfect tarnished silver frame.

Still Life with Flowers (Tulips), c.1925-30
Eskenazi Museum of Art,
Indiana University

Jane Peterson: Artist, Adventuress

My husband David and I fell in love with American Impressionist art.  It became a great passion for David.  He studied it by reading, poring over catalogues, visiting museums, attending auction exhibitions and sales.  After a few years, he could, from thirty paces away, identify almost any American painter who worked between 1870 and 1945, and he could tell you if what he was looking at was typical of the artist’s work.  Because David has the soul of a collector, he could also tell you what the work would likely sell for at auction.

In the Nineties, we began to acquire art.  By then, most paintings of American Impressionist men were beyond our means.  Women’s work was, if you asked us, greatly undervalued.   David began to look for women artists whose work appealed to his discerning eye.  We bought paintings by men if they were priced right, but there were many more quite wonderful ones by women that we wanted and could afford.

Jane Peterson soon became our favorite.

Her art is wonderful.  But there was something else about her that greatly appealed.   Her subject matter.  She had lived a life of independence and adventure.  My kind of woman.  David’s too, evidently, since he had fallen in love with me.

Jennie Christine Peterson was born in Elgin, Illinois in 1876 of an employee of the Eglin Watch Company and his homemaker wife.  She had a public education and changed he name to Jane when she finished high school.  She had had no art instruction as a child but worked from intuition and taught herself enough to gain admission to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  Her mother gave her $300 and off she went.

When she graduated Pratt in 1901, she studied for a while at the New York Art Students League.  Soon her wanderlust took her to Europe.  There she traveled with other artists and developed her style by studying her contemporaries and the masters.

Eventually, she ranged far and wide.  In 1916 she joined Louis Comfort Tiffany on a US transcontinental trip in his private railway car.  After that, she took her paints and her easel—a woman alone—from Maine to Florida, all over Europe, to Turkey, and across North Africa, making beautiful works wherever she went.  She became friends with Gertrude Stein, met Matisse, and Picasso, and had over eighty one-woman shows in her lifetime.  When she was fifty she married a corporate lawyer, M. Bernard Philipp, who was twenty-five years older than she.  They were married about ten years when he died.  Four years later, she tried marriage again, but in less than year, she and her second husband separated and later divorced.  After that failed marriage, in her mid-sixties, she took to the road again.

In 1938, the American Historical Society name her the “most outstanding individual of the year,” only the second woman ever so honored. 

Today her paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Hirshorn.

The photos above are typical of Peterson’s work.

With apologies to Jane for my poor photography, these below are the ones in David’s and my collection.  I treasure them.

"Evening, Holland Fishermen, Valendam" - Oil

"Venetian Lagoon" - Oil

"The Town Square, Afternoon" - Watercolor

"Street in Old Constantinople" -  Watercolor
David was fond of telling people how, on a trip to Istanbul, we stayed in a hotel on this
very street, and didn't realize it until we returned home and looked at picture with new eyes.

"The Clock Tower, Venice"--Oil
David gave me this one for my 51st birthday

Annamaria - Monday