Born near Rochester, New York, Percy Ives became a portrait painter and teacher. His father, Lewis Thomas Ives, was also a portrait painter and a teacher of his son. Percy Ives studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts* in 1882, and in Paris from 1884 to 1890 at the Academy Julian*. Among his teachers in Paris were Jean Leon Gerome and Gustave Boulanger.

Returning to America, Percy Ives married Elsie Caron, a still-life painter, and established a career as a portrait painter and art educator, settling in Detroit where his father had his studio. Like his father he painted subjects that were often prominent people including Grover Cleveland, a portrait begun by Lewis Thomas Ives and left unfinished by...