Painter and printmaker Margaret Patterson, the daughter of a Maine sea captain, was born at sea on her father's ship near Java. Beginning in 1895, she studied painting at the Pratt Institute under Arthur Wesley Dow, a leader of the American color woodcut movement. It was the same year Dow had mounted his first exhibit of color woodcuts at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the first print show of its kind by an American artist. It wasn't until after her studies, in 1912 or 1913, that Patterson would create her first color woodcut under the tutelage of Ethel Mars in Paris. Patterson would travel to Europe frequently, but lived in New England as a teacher throughout her life. Her prints have been shown in multiple exhibitions in Paris, and are held by numerous institutions worldwide, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian.
