Born in Elgin, Illinois, Peterson studied at the Pratt Institute with Arthur Wesley Dow and at the Art Students League with Frank Vincent DuMond, before beginning a career as a public school art teacher. In the summer of 1907 she traveled to Europe with Henry Snell and his wife, and when they returned stateside, she decided to remain in Europe. Peterson would travel widely over the next 20 years, frequently staying in the Montparnasse neighborhood in Paris, where she attended the gatherings hosted by Gertrude and Leo Stein and became acquainted with the latest trends in modern art. In the summer of 1909, she studied with Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, who profoundly impacted her style. During World War I, when she was unable to travel abroad, she spent summers in the artists' colonies of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Martha's Vineyard, and Ogunquit, Maine. Her artist friends included Louis Comfort Tiffany, with whom she traveled, and Maurice Prendergast, to whom her work was often compared. In the 1910s, she taught watercolor at the Art Students League, and she eventually became Drawing Supervisor of the Brooklyn Public Schools. Working in a Post-Impressionist style with intense color and bravura brushwork, Peterson painted city, beach, and harbor scenes. During her marriage to Moritz Bernard Philipp, a corporate attorney, she concentrated on painting brightly colored paintings of floral arrangements. Through out the artist's lifetime, her work was the subject of more than 50 solo shows.
