Painter John Wells James, Jr., lived a double life as businessman and artist. Along with his three brothers, he was a co-founder of the Brooklyn (NY) wholesale drug company, Towns & James, serving for many years as its president. As a painter, James was associated with the New Hope School of American Impressionists. He studied painting with James Knox and was a member of the Salmagundi Club, Allied Artists of America, the Brooklyn Painters Society, the Rockport Artists Society, and the American Federation of Artists. James ultimately settled in the Bucks County, Pennsylvania community of Solebury, where he regularly contributed works to the Phillips Mill exhibitions. Mostly remembered for his tightly constructed impressionist landscapes of picturesque scenes along the Delaware River, he also created a substantial number of floral still-lives. He was inspired by the work of Ernest Lawson, and enjoyed frame-making, an art he most likely learned from his close friend Max Kuehne. James took painting excursions to New England as well as abroad, and had a particular fondness for Spain. James was born February 22, 1873 in Brooklyn, New York, and he died April 3, 1951, in Magagnosc, Alpes Maritimes, France. In June 1908, he married the former Louise Buttrick in Brooklyn, and they lived at 115 Columbia Heights.