Robert Franklin Gates

Robert Franklin Gates (1906–1982) was an American muralist, painter, printmaker, and art professor. He was a professor at American University, between 1946 until 1975. In the 1930s, Gates was one of hundreds of artists who benefitted from the Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts's distribution of approximately 14,000 art and mural contracts.

Early life and education

Robert Gates was born on October 6, 1906, in Detroit, Michigan. He first studied art at the Detroit School of Arts and Crafts. He attended the Art Students League of New York in New York City, from 1929 to 1930.

During this period, he won multiple commissions from the U.S. Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts, as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program. In 1934, he created a series of watercolors for Charles Gardens, South Carolina.

While completing his Treasury Department commissions between 1937 and 1942, Gates also served as an instructor at the University of Florida, Hood College in Frederick, Maryland; the Washington County Museum of Art in Hagerstown, Maryland; and the Phillips Gallery Art School in Washington, D.C., where his wife Margaret worked as a secretary.

Personal life

Robert Gates met his first wife, Margaret Casey, at the Phillips Gallery Art School in Washington, D.C.

He died on March 11, 1982, of arteriosclerosis at Oak Meadows nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia.