Theresa Bernstein was raised in Philadelphia by parents who had immigrated from Krakow. She attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, where she studied with Elliott Daingerfield, Daniel Garber, and Samuel Murray. She was an excellent student, winning awards and spending her summers studying landscape painting with her instructors. After completing her studies in Philadelphia in 1911, she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, studying with William Merritt Chase. By the mid-teens she was exhibiting paintings of urban life in major national exhibitions and had joined a group of painters calling themselves The Eclectics. She joined the Society of Independent Artists and exhibited with the group into the 1940s. In 1919, she married the painter William Meyerowitz. They spent their summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Bernstein was socially and politically active. Bernstein's work is in many major museums in the United States.
