Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer painted the mills, factories and working people of the Delaware River valley around New Hope, Pennsylvania. He combined impressionist colour and brushwork with a strong interest in buildings and the lives around them.

Born in Harvard, Nebraska, he studied at the National Academy of Design and with William Merritt Chase in New York, and later with Daniel Garber and William Lathrop near New Hope. He once said, “A landscape without a building or a figure is a very lonely picture to me.” His work is in the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Across the Delaware and Concrete Bridge show his muted colour and solid structures.