Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert Blum began his career as an apprentice at a print-making company where he was initially attracted to drawing. Later, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, eventually relocating to New York where he was employed by Scribner’s magazine as an illustrator.

Blum’s international travels in the early 1880s took him to Europe where he visited Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. He ultimately spent two years in Venice where he befriended famed artists William Merrit Chase and James McNeil Whistler; they encouraged him to paint in pastel and watercolor. He was also influenced by his admiration for Spanish artist Mariano Fortuny and his orientalist art, and he later traveled to Japan for a years-long Scribner’s commission that profoundly influenced his work. He became a significant figure in American Japonisme, or Japanese-influenced art, although he is best remembered today for his images of Venice in oil, watercolor, and pastel.

Blum moved in circles that included important figures in modern art of his day, and the artist’s work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.