Lloyd Raymond Ney was an American non-objective artist. Known as Bill Ney, he was born in Friedenburg, Pennsylvania March 8th, 1893, the son of William W. Ney and Sadie Maidenford. He studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1918 he won a Cresson Fellowship to study in Europe.

In the 1920s Ney traveled to France where he studied and painted in Paris among the vital European modernist community. He lived at the Hotel de Versailles, 60 Boulevard Montparnasse. During this period Ney created his major work, "The Drinkers." Later, the artist wrote extensively about the process of developing this work and the transforming experience of integrating the Modernist ideal he had witnessed in Paris.

After returning to the United States, Ney settled in New Hope, PA, an established art community between New York and Philadelphia. Unlike more New Hope artists who followed impressionism in the early 20th century, Ney embraced a more expressive contemporary style including non-objective works. He was among a group of artist known as the "Independents," who challenged the traditional subject matter of regional artists. They formed a new exhibition group. Ney was part of the "New Hope Modernist School," for most of his life as a painter.

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