Louis M. Eilshemius was born into a wealthy family in Newark, New Jersey. As a child, Eilshemius studied in Geneva, Switzerland and Dresden, Germany and returned to the United States in 1881 to attended Cornell University. After graduating from Cornell, Eilshemius sought formal art education from the Art Students League in New York and the Académie Julian in Paris. Despite his training, Eilshemius did not receive the attention he thought his work deserved and changed to a more naive style of painting, his subjects occupying the middle ground between reality and fantasy. In 1917 Eilshemius exhibited at the Society of Independent Artists' annual exhibition and through that exposure made connections with Marcel Duchamp and Katherine S. Dreier. In 1920 and 1924, Eilshemius' artwork was shown in solo exhibitions at the Société Anonyme, garnering late career recognition and commercial success.
