The American artist Richard Estes (born 1932) was one of the leading realist painters of urban genre scenes in the latter half of the 20th century.

Richard Estes was born on May 14, 1932, in Kewanee, Ill., and received art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago between 1952 and 1956. Much of his training was in figural and traditional subjects. Following his graduation he worked as a graphic designer in Chicago, and also in New York City from when he moved there in 1959 until 1966 when he became a full-time painter. In 1962, on his own savings, he painted in Spain for a year. His first one-man show took place at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York in 1968.

Estes' work, like that of artists who similarly produce work with a high degree of verisimilitude, has been labeled variously as super-realism, neo-realism, photo-realism, or radical realism. All these terms are useful...