Elmer Livingston MacRae began studying art with John Twachtman (1853–1902) at the Art Students League in his hometown of New York in 1895. He soon started studying with Twachtman in the art colony of Cos Cob in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was involved in several art associations and exhibitions in New York and Connecticut. In 1911, he helped to conceptualize the modern art exhibition, The Armory Show, a notorious display of Avant-garde work that opened in 1913 and featured Battleships at Newport, a figure study that is almost Pointillist.