The landscape painter and etcher Robertson K. Mygatt was born in New York City and studied at the Art Students’ League with John Twachtman (1853–1902) and William Merritt Chase (1849–1916). He specialized in painting tonalist landscapes and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, and most frequently at the Salmagundi Club. These small and exquisitely crafted compositions, which were painted directly from nature on cigar box lids, probably represent the area around Ipswich, Massachusetts. Mygatt spent the last years of his life in Ridgefield, Connecticut.