Ruth A. Anderson was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1891 and died in Boston in 1957. She lived throughout her professional career in Baltimore (until 1920), Boston (1920-1957) and summered in Gloucester. She studied with her aunt Esther M. Groome who headed the art department at a boarding school in West Chester, PA. She also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1905-) with Thomas Anschutz, Hugh Breckenridge, Cecilia Beaux, William Merritt Chase and Jonas Lie; and after receiving a Cresson Traveling Scholarship (1912)  she trained with Emil Carlsen and J. Alden Weir.

Anderson was a member of the North Shore Art Association, the Guild of Boston Artists, Washington, DC Society of Artists, Plastic Club and the National American Women Artists. She exhibited extensively at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1917-1932), the National Academy Annuals (1917-1920, 1923), the Art Institute of Chicago (1920-1922), the Corcoran Gallery (1919-1926), the Macbeth Gallery (NYC 1923) and won awards at the National American Women Artists (1922) and the North Shore Art Association (1930).

She married Samuel Temple and they lived in Boston and Gloucester, where from 1916 she painted beach and harbor scenes for which she is best known and she became a founding member of the North Shore Art Association (Gloucester). She is written about in Pettey’s Dictionary of Women Artists and Who’s Who In American Art (through 1940).

Because of a fire in her Boston studio at 53 Charles Street, many of Anderson’s works were destroyed during the Great Depression. She was known well for her Gloucester harbor and beach views and her light, bright, loosely constructed Impressionism is individually unique.

It has been 30 years since we have seen a large Gloucester view available by Ruth A. Anderson. Her works of this magnitude are desirable, beautifully orchestrated and rare.

From 1950 until her death in 1957 Ruth Anderson was blind.