Robert Frederick Blum (9 July 1857 – 8 June 1903) was an American artist born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 9th of July 1857.
He was employed for a time in a lithographic shop, and studied at the McMicken Art School of Design in Cincinnati, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but he was practically self-taught, and early showed great and original talent.
He settled in New York in 1879, and his first published sketches of Japanese jugglers appeared in St. Nicholas. His most important work is a large frieze in the Mendelssohn Music Hall, New York, Music and the Dance (1895). His pen-and-ink work for the Century Magazine attracted wide attention, as did his illustrations for Sir Edwin Arnold's Japonica.
He was a member of the National Academy of Design, being elected after his exhibition in 1892 of The Ameya; and was president of the Painters in Pastel. Although an excellent draughtsman and etcher, it was as a colorist that he chiefly excelled. - wikipedia
