La Casa del Arte

Robert A. Swain

Robert or Bob, grew up in Berlin NJ. He was the son of a pharmacist and his mother was a commercial artist. After high school Robert attended the Philadelphia College of Art before joining the U.S. Army where he became Second Lieutenant during the Second World War and the Korean War. Meanwhile, Robert A. Swain moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and began working for the Godfrey Advertising Agency. Bob became Art Director in the late 1960's and continued to work at Godfrey for over 50 years until his death in 1997. During his "non-working" hours Bob pursued illustrating various historical buildings throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania most notably in the Chadds Ford area where his work was sold at the Brandywine River Museum. In the late 1980's he began focusing mainly on the illustration of steam trains as he volunteered at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg and became the unofficial train artist of the museum through the mid 1990's. Bob loved the challenge of capturing the very essence of his subjects by meticulously studying and rendering every detail.