Walter DuBois Richards, painter, watercolorist, illustrator and lithographer, was born in Penfield, Ohio. He graduated from the Cleveland School of Art and moved to New York in 1936, where he created illustrations for Madison Avenue advertising accounts and national publications. Richards traveled the world on assignment for Life magazine, the U.S. Air Force, and many American corporations.

His paintings have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the New York Historical Society, the Ohio Printmakers, the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Print Club, the Royal Society of Painters & Printmakers, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Watercolor Society, the Society of llustrators, the Department of National Parks, the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, the Worcester Art Museum, the Yale University Museum, the U.S. Military Academy Museum. the Pentagon and the White House.