Robert Reid was a painter and muralist. He first studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and then at the Philips Academy from 1880-1884. He moved to New York in 1884 to attend the Art Students League before enrolling at the Académie Julian in Paris. He spent time at an artist colony at Étaples on the Normandy Coast, painting peasant scenes and young women. He returned to New York in 1889, where he became an instructor at the Art Students League and the Cooper Union, as well as a successful muralist and stained glass designer.
Reid became the youngest member of the Ten American Painters, a group of artists who seceded from the Society of American Artists in 1898 to pursue the making and exhibition of Impressionist paintings. The Ten was comprised of Frank W. Benson, Joseph Rodefer DeCamp, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Childe Hassam, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Robert Reid, Edward Simmons, Edmund C. Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir.