Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, James Penney attended the University of Kansas where he studied art and graduated in 1931. Then he moved to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League with George Grosz and John Sloan and others. During the days of the Federal Arts Project in the 1930s, he had numerous mural commissions, and in the 1940s he became Vice-President of the Art Students League.

By the end of World War II, he had become seriously committed to teaching, and in 1945, was appointed Instructor of Art at Bennington College in Millbrook, New York. Subsequently he taught at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica, New York, Vassar College, and for more than twenty years, was a Professor of Art at Hamilton Colle...