Background
Patterson was born in Daylesford, Victoria.
Patterson was born in Daylesford, Victoria.
He studied at the Melbourne Art School under East. Phillips Fox and Tudor Street George Tucker, at the National Art School in Melbourne and continued his studies in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian under Lucien Simon, André Lhote and Maxime Maufra.
Through Melba"s influence, he was able to continue his studies with John Singer Sargent. He became part of the Paris arts scene and exhibited at the first Salon d"Automne exhibitions. He had five paintings at the 1905 Paris Salon at which Henri Matisse and the fauves stunned the art world.
After a visit to his homeland in 1909 or 1910, he spent the following seven years in Hawaii.
Following a year in San Francisco, he moved to Seattle to work as a freelance artist, perhaps being the first modern artist in that city. In 1919 he established the University of Washington School of Painting and Design.
Patterson married painter and former student Viola Hansen in 1922, and the two became major figures of the arts in the Pacific Northwest region. Patterson taught until his retirement in 1947.
He died in Seattle in 1967.
The Art of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the National Portrait (Australia) (Canberra), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum are among the public collections holding works by Ambrose McCarthy Patterson.