After leaving Drexel, he studied with Pyle in Wilmington from 1901 to 1903. He worked as an illustrator at this time. He then studied in Paris and, in 1908, studied landscape painting with John H. Twachtman in Connecticut. From 1909 until 1913 he taught high school art in Los Angeles, and in 1919 he founded the James E. McBurney School of Art in Chicago. From 1923 to 1926 he was also director of the School Department of the Art Institute of Peoria, Illinois. As his work as a mural painter began to demand more and more of his time, he left the teaching field and devoted himself solely to mural work. Two of his murals received silver medals at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, and he did many other murals for public and educational institutions all over the country. He died in Chicago, March 2, 1955.
