From working as an illustrator in the studio of Walt Disney to sailing on freighters, Ralston Crawford followed many paths. World War II found him in the service of the U.S. Army Air Force, Weather Division, at the same time that he was enjoying success as a painter. In 1944 his charts of weather fronts hung side by side with his Precisionist and semiabstract work in a one-man show at New York's Downtown Gallery. This portrait was cropped down to a tight head by ARTnews when it was used to illustrate Crawford's biographical profile in the "ARTnews Who's Who" series, a column initiated by editor Alfred Frankfurter in 1944.

Peter A. Juley & Son (active 1896–1975)
Gelatin silver print, circa 1944
Published January 15, 1944
ARTnews Collection, New York City