Gordon was born in 1889 in Borisov, modern day Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire).
[1] During his life, he painted portraits of Willa Cather,[2][3] Dorothy Gish,[4] Will Rogers,[5] President Calvin Coolidge, Benjamin Barr Lindsey,[6] Winston Churchill, John L. Lewis and Helen Keller.
[8] While he lived in New York, Gordon was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, and took part in their 1917 exhibition.
[9] In 1930, Good Housekeeping magazine commissioned Gordon to paint twelve portraits of "the twelve greatest American women"[10] (including Eleanor Roosevelt,[11] Grace Abbott[10] and Florence Sabin[12]) which were published once a month in the magazine through 1931.
[15] Gordon died of a heart attack on December 31, 1943, in Tallahassee, Florida, where he had been painting the portrait of the parents of then US senator Claude Pepper.