Patrick Henry Bruce

Bruce began taking evening classes at the Art Club of Richmond in 1898, while working in a real estate office during the daytime.

Although his evolution toward a modernist style was gradual, his works of 1908 reveal the influence of Renoir and Cézanne, and in that year he was among the first to enroll in Matisse's school.

[2] Bruce exhibited regularly in the Salon d'Automne, and met many of the leading artists of the early twentieth century avant garde.

During a period of close friendship with Sonia and Robert Delaunay during 1912–1914 his paintings were influenced by Orphism, but Bruce never formed an attachment to any school.

His work was admired by Marcel Duchamp[5] and may have influenced the style adopted by his former teacher, Matisse, in his mural La Danse (1932–33, in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania).