Arthur B. Carles was a thoroughly modern man.

Carles was an extraordinarily innovative artist and is partially responsible for popularizing European modernism in the United States, even when the conservative citizens of Philadelphia really wished he wouldn't.

A hardworking artist always needs friends, especially when living abroad in a foreign country. Carles two best friends were John Marin and Edward Steichen. They were a wonderful influence on one another. At Carles suggestion, Marin made the swap to watercolors, which then led to his work being exhibited at the Salon. Hoorah! In Paris, artists clicked together, learning from one another, trading secrets and ideas. There’s a lot of coming and going on those artistic streets, and Carles was able to meet many famous artists. Thanks to his friend Gertrude Stein, he met and was exposed to the works of Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and Henri Matisse. Carles also counted among his friends Alfred Barnes, Alfred Stieglitz, Hans Hofmann, and Constantin Brâncuși.

While in Paris, Carles fell hard for Mercedes de Cordoba, a talented musician, artist, and model. The first time they met, Carles purportedly said, "I'm going to marry that woman," and that's just what he did. Unfortunately for everyone, though, Carles was a heavy drinker. He believed falling off the wagon only enhanced his perceptions. But while the drinking may have led to artistic breakthroughs, it also led to a pretty rough period in his life in the 1920s. His wife and daughter moved to New York City without him, and the couple eventually divorced. Carles was then fired from his teaching position at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as he was showing up drunk most of the time, berating students, and breaking school property. If all that were not enough, Carles' mother, with whom he was quite close, died in 1927.

Carles eventually cut back on the booze to get his life together, helped along by a new, much younger wife . Sadly, though, his alcoholism would continue to be a problem off and on for the rest of his life. In 1941, an inebriated Carles fell down a stairwell in his studio and became partially paralyzed, no longer able to paint. Tragically, he spent the last eleven years of his life in a nursing home, where he died in 1952.