Davis enrolled at the Académie Julian, studying under noted academic painters Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. During his years in France, he spent considerable time in Barbizon and the Fontainebleau region, painting landscapes inspired by the traditions of the Barbizon School. He remained abroad for nearly a decade, exhibiting regularly in Paris salons while also maintaining a strong presence in the United States through annual exhibitions at Boston’s Doll & Richards Gallery. In 1884, he married a French woman, Angèle Lagarde.

Returning to America in 1890, Davis settled in Mystic, Connecticut, where he would live and work for the remainder of his life. His early landscapes were marked by the quiet, atmospheric mood of the Barbizon tradition, but by the mid-1890s his style evolved toward a brighter, more luminous interpretation of nature. He became especially celebrated for his expansive cloud-filled skies and poetic New England landscapes.

Over the course of his distinguished career, Davis received numerous honors, including a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. He exhibited widely, including at the landmark Armory Show of 1913, and became a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1906. Today, his work is represented in major American museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Widely regarded as one of the foremost American landscape painters of his generation, Davis is remembered for his masterful treatment of atmosphere, light, and sky.