Caleb Arnold Slade's paintings hang alongside those of John Singer Sargent at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Like Sargent, Slade is known for his scenes in and around Venice, Italy and in France and Arabia, and his brushwork is fluid and confident.

Slade was born in Acushnet, Massachusetts in 1882, and he maintained a studio in Truro, Massachusetts near that of Edward Hopper. He studied at Brown University, the Art Students League with Frank Vincent DuMond and at the Academie Julian in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens, Schommer and Bachet (1907).

He was a member of the Philadelphia Art Club; Paris Art Association; Allied Artists of London; Grand Rapids Art Club, Michigan; Springfield Illinois Art Club; New Bedford Art Association in Massachusetts, and the Philadelphia Sketch Club. However, because he lived many years abroad his focus was on painting and not on joining clubs or following any one school of thought. He enjoyed paintings harbors, street scenes, and landscapes.

During World War I, Slade maintained a studio in France, where painters like Chauncey F. Ryder and other American artists, stayed and painted. He joined the U.S. Army and was in the camouflage unit. After the war he returned to Tunis, North Africa to paint a series which was published in "Scribners" in 1921. He became a proficient portrait painter by 1930, but preferred painting landscapes with figures and biblical subjects.

Slade's work is represented in the permanent collections at the Gardener Museum (Boston); Springfield Art Club; Attleboro Public Library; Free Public Library; Milwaukee Art Museum; Bethany Church, Philadelphia (mural); Paramount Theater, NYC (mural); John Wanamaker & Elkins Collections, Philadelphia, University of Connecticut (Storrs) Art Museum and elsewhere.

Slade died in Truro, Massachusetts in 1961.