Abstract painter and printmaker Oliver Newberry Chaffee was born in 1881. He studied at the Art Students League in New York City with Charles Hawthorne; at the New York (City) School of Art with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri; the Detroit Fine Arts Academy, Michigan; and the Academie Julian in Paris, France. He was a member of the Provincetown Art Association, Massachusetts, and Society of Independent Artists, New York City.

Influenced by the Fauve painters during his stay in Paris, Chaffee was expert in that style, exhibiting three Fauvist landscapes at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. A contemporary review of the Armory Show complimented Chaffee's expression of "intense sunlight," and...