Born in Milton, Pennsylvania in 1902, Davis studied at the Art Students League of New York in the 1920s.
[2][3] An active figure in the New York art community, like many of his contemporaries, Davis was highly influenced by the American working class's lifestyle and the hardships endured during the Great Depression.
Davis's popularity peaked in the 1930s; details of his life and artistic career following that decade are sparse.
[1] Artist and educator Ronald K. DeLong, through a family association, came to be the caretaker of a vast trove of Davis's work left behind in a farmhouse-studio in rural Pennsylvania.
A triple interconnected series of exhibitions of Davis' work is being shown in the spring and summer of 2017, on view in the Greater Allentown, Pennsylvania area.