Art historian and educator Thomas Brendle Brumbaugh was born in 1921. He spent most of his career as a professor of fine arts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and has published many articles on American painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was co-editor of Architecture of Middle Tennessee: The Historic American Buildings Survey and co-author of The Art of Gerald Brockhurst. Brumbaugh spent several years doing research for a book on Abbott Handerson Thayer that was never realized, and published several articles on Thayer, including "An Artist and His Model: Abbott H. Thayer and Clara May," The American Art Journal, vol. 10 (May 1978).