A magazine illustrator early in his career for McCall's and Ladies Home Journal, Samuel George Phillips later devoted himself to portraiture and landscape painting as part of the Pennsylvania Impressionist School. He was a student of Daniel Garber's at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and was described as one of three Garber students whose work "best represent his influence in Bucks County." Other teachers who were influences on Phillips' mostly traditional style were William Merritt Chase and Hugh Breckenridge. Samuel George Phillips had studios in New York City, Philadelphia, and also lived in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
