American painter Russell Cheney was BOTD in 1881. Born in Manchester, Connecticut to a middle-class family, he studied at Yale University, where he met the writer F. O. Matthiessen, with whom he had a discreet 20-year relationship. He studied painting at the Art Students League in New York City and the Académie Julian in Paris. He held his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1909, and was included in a Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts show in 1914. He travelled widely through the United States and Europe, typically painting landscapes inspired by Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, and became associated with the New England Regionalist movement. He also provided illustrations for Matthiessen’s 1929 book about American lesbian writer Sarah Orne Jewett. Much of his life was spent suffering from tuberculosis, involving frequent stays in sanatoriums, and leading to his death in 1945, aged 63. After his death, Matthiessen sank into a deep depression, killing himself in 1950.