Mabel Dwight (née Mabel Jacque Williamson) was one of the most noted American printmakers of the 1920s and '30s. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, she spent her childhood in New Orleans and San Francisco where she enrolled in art classes and joined the local Sketch Club. This professional women artists' organization offered opportunities for collaborations and sketching trips abroad, including Egypt, India, and Java. In San Francisco, Dwight also first encountered progressive political, social, and philosophical ideas that would shape her thinking. She settled in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1903 and married painter and etcher Eugene Higgins three years later. During their marriage, Dwight set aside her own artistic ambitions, but the union ended after eleven years. One year later, in 1918, Dwight became the secretary at the Whitney Studio Club and began participating in their exhibitions. In 1921 she changed her name to Dwight, a name she apparently made up. She was guarded about her private life and, consequently, not many details about her circle of friends or acquaintances are known.

In 1926, Dwight went to Paris where, at age 52, she discovered her medium: lithography. It was through this printmaking technique that she was best able to express her compassion for, and healthy skepticism of, the human comedy. She gained wide recognition for her images of everyday people in Paris, greater New York (from Coney Island to Harlem), and the American farmland. These portraits and daily scenes demonstrate social concern for her fellow citizens. During the Depression, Dwight participated in the art programs of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA), but she also produced anti-fascist images and works that railed against capitalist war profiteers. In 1935, she was among the first 17 women to support the American Artists' Congress against the spread of fascism.