?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
JANE PETERSON Still Life with Mirror, Model Sailboat, Vase and Swan Figurine.
Watercolor and pencil on paper mounted on illustration board, circa 1920. 255x273 mm; 10 1/4x11 inches. Signed in ink, lower right recto, and dedicated in pencil, verso.
Provenance: Private collection, Chicago.
Peterson (1876-1965) was born in Elgin, Illinois, and grew up in relative poverty. She showed artistic promise from a young age and, without any formal training, was accepted into the Pratt Institute, New York, at age 18. She graduated from Pratt in 1901, and continued her education by enrolling in the Art Students League, New York, while simultaneously holding several art education positions. She pursued further artistic training in Europe, at the London School of Art, and in Paris, where she studied under a number of artists, including Jacques-Émile Blanche and Charles Cottet. More influential to her artwork than any formal training however was the time Peterson was able to spend in Gertrude Stein's Paris salon, situated around the corner from her Montparnasse apartment, where she was exposed to the most avant-garde work of the time, including paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse.
The dedicatee of this watercolor may be the British actress Ruby Miller (1889-1976). In this modernist still life, Peterson used the triangular mirror, set at an angle in the composition, to reflect and make abstract the geometric patterns of the toy boat, vase and swan figurine.
