Co-founder of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the New York School of Fine Arts, Rae Bredin was a Pennsylvania by birth and remained there most of his life. He was known for his landscape and portrait paintings and especially for his association with the New Hope Impressionist painters, an area he first visited in 1909. (In 1915, the artist and critic Guy Péne du Bois had characterized Pennsylvania Impressionist painting as America's "first truly national expression").

Bredin was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, to paint a portrait of Dr. Seneca Egbert, professor of hygiene at the medical school there. He taught at the Chase School of Fine Art, Shinnecock, Long Island, New ...