Painting from nature and always in natural light, Jean Lightman creates beautifully designed oils and pastels that combine a sensitivity to light and shadow with a harmonious color scheme. Her exquisite florals are inspired by early Boston School painters, most notably Edmund Tarbell, Laura Coombs Hills, and Hermann Dudley Murphy.
      Jean Lightman was born in Atlanta, Georgia into a family of would be painters. Both of her grandmothers painted at home but never developed their talents. While in college and graduate school, Lightman began drawing classes. After moving to Boston, she continued to seek drawing instruction. In a life drawing class she heard about Boston painter Paul Ingbretson, who was teaching art as it was taught in the 19th Century French Academy.
      Lightman began her formal art training in Ingbretson's atelier in 1982 and studied nearly ten years with him. Ingbretson had been a student of R.H. Ives Gammell, himself a student of William Paxton. Paxton, in turn, had studied in Paris with the French master, Jean Leon Gerome. Paxton, and other Boston painters like him, combined their accurate drawing skills, acquired in the European ateliers, with an emphasis on vibrant color and light that they learned from the French Impressionists. They became known as the "Boston School" painters. Ingbretson led his students through the rigorous "Boston School" training, beginning with charcoal cast drawing, followed by still life painting, and finally portrait painting. Emphasis was placed upon accurate drawing with sensitivity to form and edges, strong light effect, vibrant color, and overall unity of light and shadow.
      After leaving Ingbretson's atelier, Lightman began working on her own in a studio at the Emerson Umbrella in Concord, Massachusetts. Currently she paints floral still life and portraits in her studio and oil landscapes in the summer along the coast of Maine. Lightman has exhibited her prize-winning paintings at galleries throughout New England. She holds a Distinguished Artist membership at the Concord Art Association and Copley Artist standing at the Copley Society, Boston. Her artwork was included in the book, The Perfect Palette, by Bonnie Rosser Krims (Warner Books, 1998). In 1998, her painting hung in the Junior League of Boston's Decorator Showhouse and appeared in Traditional Home magazine. In 1989 she was elected a member of the prestigious Guild of Boston Artists, where she currently serves on the Board of Managers and curated a major historical exhibition, A Woman's Perspective: Founding and Early Women Members of the Guild of Boston Artists, 1914-1945. Her painting The Fisherman won the R.H. Ives Gammell Award in the Guild's 2002 Spring Awards Exhibit. More recently, her painting Pedestal Bowl won the Guild's 2006 Edmund Tarbell Award.

GALLERY INFORMATION