Dale Nichols was a Regionalist, a movement that included Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. Nichols was born on his parents’ farm in David City, Nebraska, and grew up farming. At the age of 20, he moved to Illinois to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, though his academic schooling was brief. He spent some time abroad before returning to Chicago, where he worked as an artist and illustrator. In 1939 he was named the Carnegie Professor of Art at the University of Illinois and was featured in Time magazine. The Time article directly notes his effects with snow, describing it as a frequent subject in his paintings.
During the 1940s, Nichols painted covers for The Saturday Evening Post and Liberty, as well as Christmas cards for the American Artist Group. He was employed as the art editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1943-1948 and in 1948 moved to Arizona, where he established the Artist’s School in Tubac. He spent the remainder of his life traveling and painting, living in Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, and Guatemala. In 1995, the year of his death, his art was featured on a series of United States Postal Service stamps.