Allen Gilbert Cram was born in Washington, DC, on February 1, 1886, and he was a prolific painter, illustrator, and etcher. He was best known as a painter of desert scenes and western subjects. Essentially an illustrator, Mr. Cram has had experience in many fields of art, from the time when, as a fourteen-year-old boy, he studied with the noted William Chase.  As a young man, he traveled and studied abroad. Cram also studied with Frank DeHaven, William Merritt Chase, Chas H. Woodbury, Elizabeth Shurtleff, and at the Art Students League in New York City. He moved from Boston to San Diego, California, after 1926, and later lived in Santa Barbara, where he became a member of the Santa Barbara Art League.

The work of Allen Gilbert Cram is refreshing to the eye with its vivid color and excellent draftsmanship. Most of his oil paintings present a bit of ranch life in the southwest in a brightly decorative style. His figures and animals scintillate under the bright sun or in the cool of the night; they move dramatically before the wide expanse of sky and desert. To create an impression of the vastness of the southwest region, in some of his canvases, Mr. Cram has chosen to treat large blank spaces in the sky and desert in poster style. In the night scenes, his color displays aesthetic pleasure with pronounced effectiveness.

Important galleries in the east have held his exhibitions, and in 1914, he was given the Ruth Payne Burgess award by the Art Association of Newport. Cram participated in several exhibitions like the San Francisco Art Association in 1924 and 1932; the Paul Elder Gallery in San Francisco in 1927; and also the California State Fair in 1930. Cram died in Seattle, Washington, on May 8, 1947, and his works can be found in several collections, like the Santa Barbara Courthouse, the San Diego Museum, and a collection of his pencil drawings at Stanford University.