Impressionist painter and printmaker Robert Hogg Nisbet was born on August 25, 1879 in Providence, RI. While still in elementary school he attended children's art courses at the Rhode Island School of Design. He taught for two years at Brown University before moving to New York in the early 1910s to enroll in the Art Students League (ASL). There, he studied under Frank Vincent duMond and Willard Leroy Metcalf. Nisbet traveled to England to study briefly with Henry B. Snell before returning to New York. In 1908 he was elected to the Salmagundi Club of New York and from 1909 to 1910 he served as the president of the ASL. In 1910 he married Marguerite Haile-dePourtales and they settled in South Kent, Connecticut, opening a studio at their farmhouse.

Nesbit would become a founding member of the Kent Art Associaiton, serving as president for twenty years, and was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design in 1920 and National Academician in 1928. He was a member of the National Arts Club, the Society of American Etchers, and the Philadelphia Society of Etchers. Among his awards and recognitions were three National Academy Awards and the National Arts Club prize in Painting. He exhibited throughout the U.S., including the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Are, the Detroit Institute, the New York Public Library, and the Smithsonian Institution (where he was given a solo exhibition in 1931), among others. 

He died in South Kent in 1961.