Portrait of a St. Croix Woman

Jane Piper and Moy Glidden met in 1935 in Daniel Garber’s cast-drawing class at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. During this period they traveled together to St. Croix, where each painted a portrait of the same sitter. In a 1999 letter, Glidden recalled: “Jane [Piper] and I had made friends [with the sitter] as she sat in the daily market with her tray of vegetables and fruit for sale. She was charmed to be asked to pose and arrived in her best hat trimmed with flowers (bright red was her thing!) accentuated by the dazzling pink dress. She was very sweet and full of fun and posed every morning for a week or two.”  

Piper studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the Barnes Foundation, and privately with Arthur B. Carles. She first exhibited at Woodmere in 1968, when ten of her works were included in An Invited Group Exhibition by Painters and Sculptors. She also served as a juror for Woodmere’s 39th Annual Juried Exhibition in 1979. Over the course of her long career, she exhibited widely at institutions including Woodmere, PAFA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Allentown Art Museum, Lehigh University, and Swarthmore College. She held teaching appointments at the University of the Arts, the New York Studio School, and PAFA, where she became a significant mentor to Bill Scott, whose work is on view nearby.

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