Margaret Jordan Patterson's Woodcuts of Flowers and Landscapes

Margaret Jordan Patterson (1867–1950)'s father was a sea captain, and her mother, Sarah, went into labor while they were sailing. They stopped in Java, one of the Indonesian Islands, and Margaret was born in a hotel in Java. On the voyage home, her mother struggled with a fever, and the ship sprang a leak in a hurricane. Understandably, her father wrote in his diary that it was "one of the most anxious passages I have ever experienced."

But Margaret was unharmed, and she grew up in Boston and Saco with a great love of the sea and traveling. She first started learning art from a correspondence course (the 1800s version of an online class). In 1895, she attended the Pratt Institute for a year, left, then traveled to Florence and Paris and studied art directly from other artists. Her paintings quickly began gaining recognition for her bold and skillful use of color.

Patterson was a pinoeer of woodcuts in the States and Europe. Around 1910, she learned the technique, likely from the artist Ethel Mars, and was enamoured by Japanese woodcuts. Woodcuts are the oldest form of printmaking in which images are carved into wood and then pressed onto the paper. Each color requires a separate carved block (called a plate). In some of her work, Patterson pressed the woodblock into the paper with such strength that it made an indentation, giving some of her flowers a 3D quality.

Her technical and artistic mastery of the technique was stunning, and she exhibited her work in Paris, Boston, and New York. In 1917 and 1918, Patterson and five other Boston women artists (Jane Peterson, Mary Bradish Titcomb, Elizabeth Wentworth Rogers, Lucy Conant, and Laura Coombs Hills) exhibited together as "The Group," likely the female counterparts to the Ten American Painters. Patterson taught art and became head of the Dana Hall School's art department. She died on February 17, 1950 and is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery.

You may also enjoy the collection of her work at MFA Boston, although their photographs are not in the public domain. If you would like help purchasing prints of any of her public domain art, please reach out!