Ralston Crawford, an early modernist painter particularly noted as a precisionist, was born in 1906 in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada. He lived in Buffalo, New York from 1910 to 1926, where he later taught at the School of Fine Arts. 
Crawford first studied art at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1927 and also worked at the Walt Disney Studio. His studies continued in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the nearby Barnes Foundation in Merion Pennsylvania. In 1932 and 1933 he attended the Academie Colarossi and the Academie Scandinave in Paris. 
Crawford’s association with precisionism spanned the 1930’s and beyond.  Austere shapes, sharp outlines and flat colors characterized his work. He used abstract treatments of industrial sites, grain elevators, ships and machines, creating unique perspectives and movement.