[3] He then returned to Europe, worked at various jobs in Paris, painted independently, and studied at the Académie Julian with André Lhote.

He returned to New York in 1926 and began a career that was marked by the hardships of severe illness, an almost fatal operation, and constant financial trouble.

Evergood worked on WPA art projects from 1934 to 1937 where he painted two murals: The Story of Richmond Hill (1936–37, Public Library branch, Queens, N.Y.) and 'Cotton from Field to Mill (1938, post office in Jackson, Ga.).

A New York City police officer was killed in the line of duty at Evergood's house located at 132 Bank Street, Greenwich Village on August 17, 1947.

Police Officer Thomas J. Gargan, responding to a neighbor's call reporting a burglary, was fatally shot in the chest and his partner was wounded by the burglar.

[9] Evergood's influences include El Greco, Bosch, Brueghel, Goya, Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sloan's Ashcan paintings, and even prehistoric cave art.

His color is never conventional but rather evokes an extremely personal mood that reveals the artist as both militantly social and warmly sensuous.

A characteristic work of this period in Evergood's life is The New Lazarus, painted in 1954 and presently housed in the Whitney Museum of American Art.

A blend of reality and fantasy gives his paintings an appealing, cartoonish quality, and his incisiveness as a social critic emboldens his work.