Waldo Peirce (December 17, 1884 – March 8, 1970) was an American painter, who for many years reveled in living the life of a bohemian expatriate.

In a modern account, he was described as Rabelaisian, bawdy, witty, robust, wild, lusty, protean, lecherous, luscious,[3] and was sometimes called "the American Renoir."

With a mustache and full beard and a large cigar jammed perpetually into his mouth he looked every inch of a cartoonist's notion of an artist.

He then attended Harvard University and, by his own account, barely graduated due to copious amounts of time spent in the local pool hall and other trivial pursuits.

In 1915, two years before the entry of the United States into World War I, he joined the American Field Service, an ambulance corps that served on the French battlefields.

In 1938, he was commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts to paint two murals, Legends of the Hudson and Rip van Winkle, for the U.S. Post Office in Troy, New York.

[5] In 1910, Peirce enjoyed a bit of local notoriety when his prank on friend John Reed, the American communist who is buried in the Kremlin walls, became known and circulated.

Reed was then arrested by the ship's captain for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of his traveling companion and thrown into the brig.

When the freighter eventually arrived in England, Peirce was at the dock waiting to greet his friend Reed.

After WWI had come to an end, Peirce befriended Hemingway in Europe and the two traveled together to various continental locations, in particular Spain.

Her father was Isaac Rice, a New York lawyer, professor of law, and the founding publisher of Forum Magazine.

Dorothy studied sculpture and painting in the Art Students League, with instruction from Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, and George Bellows.

According to her former paperboy, Jim Forest, Ivy became close friends with writer James Joyce during her time in Paris.

His wife is Gareth Peirce, the human rights activist attorney for the Birmingham Six and Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four.

During World War II, Alzira was an Army captain in the American Red Cross Motor Corps.

In a letter written in the mid-1930s, Ernest Hemingway described a visit by Peirce to his home in Key West, Florida: "Waldo is here with his kids like untrained hyenas and him as domesticated as a cow.

Lives only for the children and with the time he puts on them they should have good manners and be well trained but instead they never obey, destroy everything, don't even answer when spoken to, and he is like an old hen with a litter of ape hyenas.

They have a nurse and a housekeeper too, but he is only really happy when trying to paint with one setting fire to his beard and the other rubbing mashed potato into his canvasses.

A resident of Searsport, Maine, Peirce died on March 8, 1970, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, of a cerebral thrombosis.