Jane Piper (1917-1991) was recognized by colleagues and critics alike as one of Philadelphia's foremost painters and teachers, and she enjoyed a career that spanned fifty years and included thirty-five solo exhibitions. Working mostly in still life, Piper often combined figurative and abstract elements within a single canvas, producing pictures that occupy an inventive space between representation and pure formal invention. She has been described as an "instinctive individualist," and her independent spirit characterized her art, her education, and her approach to teaching. She was deeply committed to both her painting and her teaching, and she once observed that her primary interest in making a painting was to find a form that would allow for the possibility of an expression of joy, because for her art was fundamentally about giving pleasure.

Born in Philadelphia, Piper first became aware of her interest in art while traveling through France at the age of nine, enrolling in art lessons upon her return home. She was influenced early in her career by an exhibition of work by Hugh Breckenridge, and she later pursued her formal artistic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Daniel Garber, one of the leading Pennsylvania Impressionists. Her education continued through study with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown in 1941, along with training under Earl Horter and Arthur Carles, and further studies at the Barnes Foundation. This unusually broad artistic education, drawing on both Pennsylvania Impressionism and the modernist principles of Hofmann and Carles, gave Piper a rich foundation for the personal painterly vocabulary she would develop over the following decades.

Piper taught painting and drawing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the mid-1950s and then at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1956 to 1985, a nearly thirty-year commitment to art education that made her one of the most influential Philadelphia painting teachers of her generation. Her sustained teaching career shaped generations of younger artists in the city.

Piper's first solo exhibition was held in 1943 at the Robert Carlen Gallery in Philadelphia, launching a substantial exhibition career that continued for decades. Her work was also shown in New York City and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Annuals from 1945 through 1968. Her paintings are held today in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy, and other significant museum and private collections, where they remain warmly appreciated examples of Philadelphia painting at its most joyfully inventive.