The Art Students League of New York operated a summer painting school in Woodstock, New York, which Leith-Ross first attended in 1913. His instructors included Birge Harrison and John F. Carlson. It was there that he met fellow student John Fulton Folinsbee, who would become his life-long friend. Folinsbee had contracted polio as a child, and was confined to a wheelchair. The two men shared a cabin, and Leith-Ross would carry Folinsbee around the countryside on his back. Each served as best man for the other's wedding. Folinsbee married in 1914, and he and his wife settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1916, where Leith-Ross was a frequent houseguest.Kirsten M. Jensen, Folinsbee Considered. New York, NY: Hudson Hills Press, 2014. Both men painted en plein air, directly from nature. They were famous for spending afternoons sketching on the bridge at New Hope (and for tossing anything that displeased them into the Delaware River).
