Cowles Art School was established in 1883, in a studio building located at 145 Dartmouth Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It was one of the largest art schools in the city and boasted an enrollment of several hundred until it was closed in 1900.

Dennis Miller Bunker was an American painter and innovator of American Impressionism. His mature works include both brightly colored landscape paintings and dark, finely drawn portraits and figures. One of the major American painters of the late 19th century, and a friend of many prominent artists of the era, Bunker died from meningitis at the age of 29.