Landscape and figure painter William Anderson Coffin was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1855. After study at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, he left for Paris in 1877 to continue his art education. Coffin studied in the atelier of academic artist Leon Bonnat, possibly for up to five years, where he painted the figure and continued drawing and painting from casts of classical sculpture that had first captured his interest at Yale. Coffin exhibited in the Paris Salons* of 1879, 1880 and 1882. The painting shown in 1879 represented the students at work in Bonnat's figure painting class. His landscapes were influenced by the Barbizon Schoo*l of French artists.

In 1883, Coffin came to live and wo...