He was raised in Toledo, Ohio and attended the University of Maryland but, not liking formal education, was influenced by artist Kenyon Cox to quit college to paint. He studied art in Cincinnati, in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Thomas Eakins, and in Paris at the Academy Julian.

At age 20, he became a magazine illustrator in New York City, working for "Scribner's Monthly," "Harper's," and "Century." His specialty was city streets and the lighting effects at night. He also studied in Paris at the Academy Julian and after that settled in Cincinnati where he met western painters Henry Farny and Joseph Sharp who encouraged him to paint in the West as they had done.

In 1892, hired by the Santa Fe Railroad, he went to New Mexico where he spent eight months in the Santa Fe area sketching at the nearby pueblos. In 1893, he went to Arizona and spent several months with the Hopis who made him a priest of a fraternity. When he returned to Cincinnati with paintings of the Southwest, viewers had little appreciation of the subject matter, and he did not receive recognition until much later.

In 1903, he moved to California, and for the remaining twenty-nine years of his life settled in Santa Barbara, where he helped found the Santa Barbara Art School and left much of his work to Santa Barbara State College.

Source: Artists in California, 1786-1940, by Edan Hughes

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