James Edward Davis (1901-1974) was a painter, photographer, and filmmaker who worked primarily in New Jersey. Born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Davis specialized in the abstract and surrealist styles and his artwork was heavily inspired by the zeitgeist of the 1920s. He graduated from Princeton University in 1923 and studied painting and sculpture in France with Andre Lhote for three years. Davis taught at multiple places during his career including Lawrenceville School (1933-1936), Princeton (1936-1942), and the Moholy-Nagy Institute of Design (1947). Davis is also known for his experimental abstract films that use mobile designs of transparent plastics and controlled illumination. His paintings have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Addison gallery, and the Princeton and Yale University Art Museums. He died in Princeton, New Jersey at the Princeton Medical Center at the age of 73 on September 20, 1974.