Robert Winthrop Chanler (February 22, 1872 – October 24, 1930) was an American artist and member of the Astor and Dudley–Winthrop families. A designer and muralist, Chanler received much of his art training in France at the École des Beaux-Arts, and there his most famous work, titled Giraffes, was completed in 1905 and later purchased by the French government. Robert D. Coe, who studied with him, described Chanler as being "eccentric and almost bizarre." Chanler rose to prominence as an acclaimed American artist when his work was exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. Family and early life Chanler was born on February 22, 1872, in New York City to John Winthrop Chanler of the Dudley–Winthrop family and Margaret Astor Ward of the Astor family. Through his father, he was a great-great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant and a great-great-great-great-grandson of Wait Winthrop and Joseph Dudley. Through his mother, he was a grandnephew of Julia Ward Howe, John Jacob Astor III, and William Backhouse Astor, Jr. Robert had 10 brothers and sisters, including politicians Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler and William Astor Chanler. His sister Margaret Livingston Chanler served as a nurse with the American Red Cross during the Spanish–American War. Robert's eldest brother John Armstrong "Archie" Chanler married novelist Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy. His older brother Winthrop Astor Chanler served in the Rough Riders in Cuba and was wounded at the Battle of Tayacoba. His siblings and he became orphans after the death of their mother in 1875 and their father in 1877, both to pneumonia. The children were raised at their parents' Rokeby Estate in Barrytown, New York. John Winthrop Chanler's will provided $20,000 a year for each child for life (equivalent to $470,563 in 2018), enough to live comfortably by the standards of the time. Several of Chanler's paintings still decorate the mansion at Rokeby. Career Like Mai Rogers Coe and Everett Shinn, Chanler was staying in Paris in the 1890s and became involved with the art community. When he returned to the U.S. in the early 1900s, he purchased a townhouse on East 19th Street, decorated it with his own works, and called it his House of Fantasy. The townhouse became a social center for New York's art community. Like Shinn, Chanler was a personality and a figure in his time. Chanler was a member of the New York State Assembly (Dutchess Co., 2nd D.) in 1904, but