1898 - 1978

Maraguerite Pearson was born in Philadelphia in 1898.  Struck with polio while in her teens, and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, Pearson did not allow her disability to alter her plans of becoming an artist. 

Marguerite Pearson studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School and worked privately with Edmund Tarbell from 1922-27.  She also studied with William James and Frederick Bosley at the Museum of Fine Arts School. She also studied with several teachers in design, landscape and illustration. She also studied at the Fenway School of Illustration (Boston), and later studied with Aldro T. Hibbard, Henry Leith-Ross, Henry Hunt Clark, Howard Giles(design) Harold N. Anderson and Chase Emerson (illustration). She became best known for her floral still lifes and interiors with figures.  Pearson had been confined to a wheelchair since contracting polio in her teen years. 

Pearson worked as a magazine and news illustrator before turning to painting full time in 1922.  By the mid-40's Pearson became quite financially successful, and her works were reproduced as prints.  Beside her intense studies, Pearson belonged to many arts and artists groups.  In 1941 she moved to Rockport, MA

which she had been visiting in the summer since 1920.  Her popularity was sustained by continual positive criticism and she was in great demand as a teacher and juror.

Pearson's balanced composition and precise observation makes her work enduring with life and light. 

She was unmarried and taught and painted in Rockport until her death on April 2, 1978.

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