Richard Blossom Farley was born in Poultney, Vermont, and attended the New Jersey State Model School in Trenton and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he sporadically exhibited from 1902 until 1931. Among his teachers were James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), and Cecilia Beaux (1855–1942). Farley also exhibited at the Philadelphia Art Club in 1912 and 1913, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1914, St. Botolph’s Club in Boston, and at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. He was a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, the Art Alliance in Philadelphia, and the American Federation of Arts and the Salmagundi Club in New York. He began his career as a portraitist, but around 1912 (the year he lived in Trenton) he began to specialize in seascapes. Farley has a highly distinctive decorative style, with an emphasis on heavily textured surfaces. The artist's signature often includes a blossom emblem: an allusion to his middle name.