Moses Soyer was one of three artist brothers, along with his twin Raphael (1899-1987) and Isaac (1902-1981), born in Czarist Russia into an intellectual family headed by their father, a Hebrew scholar. The family immigrated to the United States in 1912 and settled in New York, where Moses studied art at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and with Robert Henri (1865-1929) and George Bellows (1882-1925), two of the urban realists considered among the most important members of the Ashcan School. The young artist’s work evolved out of this realist training and his experiences during the Depression, making him one of the foremost Social Realists. A writer and an influential teacher, Soyer specialized in painting ballet dancers and portraits in the years following the Depression.