Robert Roy McGeorge, who was born in Michigan, was a painter, illustrator, and portrait photographer. He attended the University of Michigan for three years and studied at the Art Students League of New York with John H. Twachtman (1853-1902) and Kenyon Cox (1856-1919); Chase School of Painting in New York led by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916); the New York School of Art with Frank V. DuMond (1865-1951); and with Lucius W. Hitchcock (1868-1942) and Edward Dufner 1871-1957) at the Buffalo Arts Students’ League. In 1926, he was living at 250 Bryant Street. As a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, he exhibited his paintings in the Albright Art Gallery. This landscape, painted six years after moving to Buffalo, may depict a Western New York scene.
McGeorge came to Buffalo in 1900 and worked as a bookkeeper for Dunning & Stevens, meat brokers at the stockyards. In 1915, he left that job to open a photography studio at 534 Elmwood Avenue, where he maintained a portrait business for about forty years. He is said to have photographed many of Buffalo’s prominent families, as well as presidents of the Buffalo Club, where he was a member and served as president and treasurer. He served as president of the Professional Photographers’ Association of New York and was a member of the Buffalo Camera Club and the Photographers’ Association of America. His photographs were “exhibited in numerous cities and art galleries in [the] United States and abroad.”