Robert Spencer was born in 1879 in Harvard, Nebraska, the son of a minister. His work is associated with the Pennsylvania Impressionists centered in Bucks County. Spencer’s oil paintings were deeply influenced by fellow Bucks County painter Daniel Garber, as well as Robert Henri. His most well-known paintings include Repairing the Bridge (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Mountebanks and Thieves (The Phillips Collection). Spencer once emotionally proclaimed that “A landscape without a building or a figure, is a very lonely picture to me.” Despite struggling with depression his whole life, Spencer never failed to idealize scenes and transform ordinary landscapes into charming visuals.

After graduating high school in Yonkers, New York in 1899, the Nebraska native was interested in pursuing a career in medicine. He decided to take a sharp U-turn, however, and began his art training at the National Academy of Design. He later studied at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, before moving to an art colony in New Hope, Pennsylvania to train under Daniel Garber in 1906. His career effectively took off in 1910 with exhibitions at the Carnegie Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The award-winning artist’s most quintessential paintings depict the urban grit of mills, tenements, and factories that populated his surroundings, but his later paintings portray waterfronts in New York and France.