Jane Piper Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1916 - d. 1991

Jane Piper (1916–1991) was an American artist known for her abstract treatment of still lifes. Building on the French modernist tradition of Matisse and Cézanne, she gave color precedence over representation. Shortly after her death a critic said "throughout her career Piper worked within a relatively narrow aesthetic range. She was interested in spatial organization and in creating space through color — concerns of another painter she admired, Henri Matisse. There's a sense of Matisse in her later work, but no indication that she was trying to imitate him; the resonance reflects shared concerns." From her first exhibition in 1943 through the end of her life she was given a total of thirty-four solo exhibitions in Philadelphia, New York, and other East Coast galleries and her works have been collected by major museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Academy of Design, The Phillips Collection, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Piper was raised in a prosperous and well-connected Philadelphia family.[5] At the age of nine she spent a year at a pension in Cannes where, observing an amateur artist at work, she became infatuated with painting and afterwards convinced her reluctant father to enroll her in an art class.[6](p79)[note 1] After a few years' study under the Philadelphia artist Grace Gemberling, she was able to study art as a boarder in a private school for girls, Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut.[7](p7)[8][9] Graduating in 1935, she returned to Philadelphia where she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, first under Daniel Garber, whom she found to be too authoritarian, and then under Arthur Carles whose instruction she felt to be the most useful of all her teachers and whose artistic influence remained with her for the rest of her career.[6](pp79–80)[10] In 1936 she also enrolled for private study with the artist and collector Earl Horter. In his studio, her frequent close contact with paintings by Picasso, Braque, and Matisse made her aware of new possibilities in her own work.[7](p12)[note 2] The influence of French Modernism on her work was also enhanced by informal study in Paris in 1937 and periods of study in the Barnes collection in 1938.[7](pp9–10)[note 3] Three years later she spent the summer months at the school Hans Hofmann conducted in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[7](p12)[note 4] Piper appreciated Hofmann's instruction but preferred Carles's.