John McGrath was a Baltimore, Maryland, artist who documented life in the American South over several decades. His training included stints at the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art (London) and the academies Julian and Colarossi (Paris). His career memberships included the Baltimore Watercolor and Charcoal clubs, the latter of which he headed from 1931 to 1942. In the 1930s he exhibited in the Brooklyn Society of Etchers shows alongside such colleagues as Childe Hassam and John Taylor Arms. He was the subject of a 1935 "Talk of the Town" piece in The New Yorker. His work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is ironic if you know the story of the interaction between the two; the Maryland Historical Society and numerous private collections. He was a native of Ireland.