Macdonald-Wright was a modern American artist and co-founder of Synchromism, an abstract, color-based mode of painting. He was raised in California and studied art locally before traveling to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Colarossi. In Paris he befriended Morgan Russell while the two were studying with Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart, and the two American artists launched Synchromism with exhibitions in Munich and Paris in 1913. Synchromism would become the first modern art movement begun by Americans to have international influence. Its influence was broadened with the publication of the book Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning, by Stanton's brother Willard Huntington Wright.
