Harry Anthony DeYoung was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 5, 1893. He was a landscape, figure, genre, and portrait painter, muralist, draftsman and teacher. He studied with Edward John Lake and John W. Norton at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and taught art classes for children in Chicago from 1914-1916. He was an honor student in 1917 at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with F. de Forrest Schook and John Warner Norton.

DeYoung served as a sergeant in the quartermaster corps during the last two years of World War I, 1917-1918. Back in Chicago following the War, he was active in teaching, as well as painting. In 1922, he was an assistant instructor at Bailey's Harbor Summer School of Art,...