Morris Pancoast was born in 1877 in Salem, New Jersey. He despised routine jobs, wanting badly to be an artist. He received a break of sorts in 1895 when he was encouraged in his desire to study art by an illustrator, Frederick R. Gruger, for the Philadelphia Public ledger newspaper, where Pancoast had been hired as an assistant cashier and bookkeeper. Because of his inexperience, he could not get a job in the paper's art department, despite studying nights at Drexel University and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
In 1902, in a gutsy move, Pancoast withdrew his savings and went to Paris, studying for three years with Jean Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian and traveling in Europe. He obtained a job in the art department of the Philadelphia Inquirer upon his return.
Pancoast was an Impressionist who generally painted peaceful winter landscapes and scenes of the New England shore, though there can be an expressionist freedom of brushwork, intensity of color and darkness of mood. He died in 1963.