Betty Lane

1907-1996

Theme/Style – Modernism, Surrealism, landscape, portraits, figurative work

Media – Oils, watercolors, woodblock and silkscreen prints, ceramics, glass

Artistic Focus – Betty Lane’s work spans many media, but even among her oil paintings there is a tremendous range of subject matter and technique. The one constant is Lane’s ability to convey something bold, original and very personal about herself and her view of the world, often with a fearless and unguarded use of vivid colors and images that seem drawn from the unconscious.

Career Highlights –

• Betty Lane was born in Washington, DC in 1907. After high school she studied at the city’s Corcoran School of Art, after which she attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design).
• In 1928 Lane and her sister traveled to Paris, where Lane studied with cubist painter André Lhote.
• On Lane’s return to Washington, DC she met Duncan Phillips, and in 1931 he presented a solo show of Lane’s watercolors at the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery (now the Phillips Collection), and also included her in a three-person exhibition with John Marin and Harold Weston. During her Washington, DC shows, Lane’s work was noticed and appreciated by Henri Matisse.
• Lane went on to exhibit at the Delphic Studios in New York in 1932.
• She later returned to Europe, living in Paris and in Cambridge, England. In England she married Canadian writer and filmmaker Gerald Noxon and had a son in 1936.
• In 1939 Lane and her family left England for Ontario, Canada, where Lane continued to paint. She exhibited at the Galerie St. Etienne in New York in 1941 and 1944, the Whyte Gallery in Washington, DC in 1944, and the Ontario Society of Artists in Toronto, Canada in 1945.
• Lane later relocated to Brewster on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. She exhibited at the Forty-Fourth Street Gallery in New York and the Cape Cod Art Association in Barnstable, Massachusetts in 1948.
• Divorced around 1950, Lane began a teaching career at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut. She continued to exhibit, in shows at the Carl Bredemeier Gallery in Buffalo, New York and the Scargo Gallery in Dennis, Massachusetts in 1958.
• Lane again traveled to Europe, as well as to Central and Latin America, Asia, and Australia; and after her retirement from teaching in 1965 she devoted the rest of her life to painting. She exhibited at the Ethel Putterman Gallery in Orleans, Massachusetts and at the Cape Cod Conservatory in West Barnstable, MA in 1984.
• Betty Lane passed away in Brewster, Massachusetts in 1996.
• In 1997 there was a major retrospective exhibition entitled “Betty Lane: Painting a Life” at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA; as well as shows at the Julie Heller Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts (1999); Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, California (2006 and 2008); and another show at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, “Betty Lane: On the Cape,” in 2007.
• Betty Lane’s paintings are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; the Provincetown Art Association, Massachusetts; and the Cape Cod Museum of Art.

 

Selection of Works by this Artist

Bibliographic references are available upon request.