John Vanderpoel was an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago 1880-1906. In 1909, he was the Director of the People’s University in Missouri. Five of his paintings were exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in 1893, and his painting, Little Miss Muffett won a bronze medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis World’s Fair).
He wrote The Human Figure, which became a standard text book in the teaching of figurative painting.
Vanderpoel paintings are quite rare because he spent so much of his time teaching and little of his time in actual practice and production.