An award-winning watercolor and pastel painter, Sarah Choate Sears grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a prominent family. Her father was an attorney and president of the Old Colony railroad line that linked Boston to its suburbs to the south. She was educated at home, and like many proper young ladies, learned floral watercolor painting with the expectation that it would be a private leisure activity.

In 1877, she married Joshua Montgomery Sears, a man of very wealthy inheritance whose affluence allowed her to pursue her painting extensively. Sarah studied with Ross Sterling Turner, a Boston impressionist, and first exhibited her work in an 1884 show at his studio. She then studied at the Cowles Art School in Boston with Dennis M...