Robert Carpenter Spencer was born on 1 December 1879 in Harvard, Nebraska, son of Solomon Hogue Spencer, a Swedenborgian clergyman. Spencer had planned to study medicine, but instead in 1899 began to study art at the National Academy of Design in New York City. Spencer studied with the established landscape painter William Lathrop. In 1913 he met Margaret Alexina Harrison Fulton (born 1882), a fellow student of Lathrop who was an architect as well as a painter. He then married her in 1914. He died on 11 July 1931.
Spencer is known for his realistic paintings of figures against a backdrop of factories and apartment houses. He mostly just painted Pennsylvania landscapes with people and buildings as the main focus. He said, "A landscape without a building or a figure is a very lonely picture to me." His paintings made in 1909-1910 of Pennsylvania mills and mill workers are considered to be his best work. He painted in an impressionist style with short, tight brushstrokes.
This is one of Robert Spencer's most famous paintings made in 1912.
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