Niles Spencer was born in 1893 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to a prosperous family who owned a textile mill. He belonged to the Precisionist Movement, which included notable artists such as George Ault, Ralston Crawford, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, and Joseph Stella. Spencer’s simple architectural landscapes that characterized his mature work as well as his early still lifes were partially influenced by Paul Cézanne, in addition to European Cubists Georges Braque and Juan Gris. Frequently described as introspective, Spencer struggled for recognition during his career because he was unwilling to commercially promote his art and also because Spencer had a low output stemming from his time-consuming painting process.

The Rhode-Island born artist attended the Ogunquit School in Maine in 1913 with marine painter Charles Woodbury, before graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1915. He settled in New York in 1916 and trained at the Art Students League with George Bellows and Robert Henri. The subjects in Spencer’s work in the 1920s were wintry scenes largely based off of his New England surroundings, as the artist lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts during this decade. Spencer’s subject matter changed when he moved back to New York around 1930 and decided to paint the industry and architecture of the city. From the mid-1940s until his death in 1952, Spencer’s work became more abstract and two-dimensional.