AMBROSE PATTERSON (1887-1966)
Australia-born, French-trained painter Ambrose Patterson, organizer of the University of Washington
School of Painting and Design, was (along with Mark Tobey) one of the major proponents of modern
art in the Seattle area.
He was trained in French academies and ateliers in the early decades of the 20th century. By 1903
Patterson began exhibiting as a member of Avant Garde Postimpressionist groups like the Salon D'Automne
in Paris and Le Cercle Artistique et Litteraire in Brussels.
Strongly rooted in the early bohemian decades of modernism, Ambrose Patterson was internationally recognized
as a painter and printmaker. He spent over forty of his mature years in Seattle. Patterson is probably best
known for his educational role in Seattle, as it's first modernist link to Europe. Most of his work is in private
and public collections dispersed throughout Australia, France, London, Belgium, and the United States.
