Joan Mitchell (1925-1997) distinguished herself as a pivotal player in the post-war movement of Abstract Expressionism, with a career spanning more than four decades. She was skilled at lithography printing, pastel on paper, and oil on canvas, among other mediums. Throughout her long career, Mitchell's surroundings—which included things like water, trees, dogs, poetry, and music—had a profound effect on her artwork. Her art was greatly influenced by her keen sense of form, space, and color as well as her keen study of landscapes. Mitchell was born in Chicago, Illinois and completed her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947. After being awarded a travel fellowship, she was able to spend a year in France, where she produced more abstract work. In 1949, she returned to the United States and rose to prominence as a member of "New York School" of poets and painters.

Mitchell achieved notable success with frequent exhibitions in New York and Paris in the later years of her life. Prestigious institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Museum of Modern Art began collecting her works in the 1950s. In 1974, the Whitney Museum hosted a mid-career retrospective of her work. In 1982, she became the first American female artist to have a solo exhibition at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris. A retrospective exhibition, "The Paintings of Joan Mitchell: Thirty-six Years of Natural Expressionism," toured the U.S. in 1988, including stops at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.