The son of Russian parents, Jo Davidson was born in 1883 in New York City's Lower East Side. He was an exhibitor in the revolutionary 1913 Armory Show that introduced modern art to America, but became essentially an academic portrait sculptor in marble, bronze and terra-cotta. Davidson apparently did not have his subjects pose, as such; rather it is said that he was an outgoing personality who preferred to observe and speak with them, getting to know them as people.

His family intended him for a career in medicine at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, but he was attracted to art there. As a teenager, he had studied art at night at the Art Students League in New York City. Leaving Yale in 1903, Davidson again studied at the Le...