Born in Pittsburgh, Tack moved to New York in the 1880s where he studied at St. Francis Xavier College and the Art Students League. He was a friend of John LaFarge and painted his portrait around 1900 and furthered his studies with John Twachtman. By the teens, Tack’s work attracted the attention of Duncan Phillips, who became his close friend and chief patron. Although he painted landscapes and portraits in a realist and impressionist tradition, Tack turned to abstraction later in his career and he is considered by some to be an important link to mid-century abstraction in America.
