Etcher, painter, and illustrator, Vaughan Trowbridge was born in Astoria, Queens, New York, in 1869. He attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he graduated with a degree in banking in 1889, and then went on to work as a clerk for the Susquehanna Railroad. Nine years later, he left the trade to study art in Paris, under the tutelage of Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He remained active through the 1920s.

Other than the occasional exhibition or family visit, he would not return to the United States for the rest of his life.