Identity:

Caroline Peart was a Pennsylvanian artist. She was the daughter of John Peart and Martha Herr Peart.

Life:

Peart studied at Philadelphia Friends School and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1888 she travelled to Italy, Spain and France, where she painted landscapes, portraits and copies of old master works, for example, in the Prado in Madrid. On her return she opened her own studio in Philadelphia. In 1898 she won the Mary Smith Prize from the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts.

In 1900, Peart was back in Europe Paris and attended JW's Académie Carmen in Paris. However, she was not accepted to continue there because of her previous training. Inez Addams wrote to her: 'Mr. Whistler on being reminded of your work, desires me to say - that it cannot be accepted as the ingenuous work of a novice - but is recognised as the outcome of a deliberate training, with which no interference could be possibly entertained' [#11796].

In 1901 both Peart and JW were asked to exhibit at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Peart also exhibited at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. She bequeathed her paintings and a portfolio of student drawings to Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa., which held a retrospective exhibition of her work in 1964. In 1996 it held the first exhibition of her academy drawings.

Bibliography:

Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980; http://www.fandm.edu (accessed 2003).