Ramsey County History – Spring 2011: “‘A Gentle, Kind Spirit Whose Life Was Art’ Jean Sanborn Gross: Artist, Painter, and Printmaker”

“A Gentle, Kind Spirit Whose Life Was Art” Jean Sanborn Gross: Artist, Painter, and Printmaker
Author: Eileen R. McCormack

The article looks at the life of artist Jean Sanborn Gross (1919–1983), the daughter of Hazel and Frederick Sanborn. When Jean was seven, her parents divorced, and she was raised for a time by her grandmother, Rachel Rice Sanborn, and her Aunt Rachel Sanborn. Shortly thereafter, Helen and Judge John B. Sanborn Jr., who were childless, adopted Jean and, in 1926 ,she went to live with them in St. Paul. Educated at local schools, she graduated from Stephens College. Sanborn Gross grew up with an aesthetic perspective that she nurtured by attending the St. Paul Gallery and School of Art, where she studied drawing and printmaking in the early 1940s. A number of artists who had strong national reputations taught at the school during Jean’s time as a student, and she learned much in her classes with Cameron Booth and Lowell Bobleter, both of whom encouraged her to enter her work in local art competitions. Two perspectives were also a constant in her life and art: an awareness of urban landscapes, resulting from her life in St. Paul, and a fondness for nature and rural life thanks to her family’s seasonal cabin on the shore of the St. Croix River. In 1944, she married William Gross, and the couple had three children.
PDF of McCormack article