Although John Whorf was a competent post-impressionist oil painter he is considered one of the finest American watercolorists from the early 20th century and his work is highly sought after. His artistic style was most influenced by John Singer Sargent and Frank W. Benson. His landscapes of the four seasons in and around New England are spontaneously executed and his favorite locale was Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod.

Whorf was born in Winthrop, MA in 1903 and died in Provincetown in 1959. He studied with his father Harry C. Whorf; at the St. Botolph Studio in Boston with Sherman Kidd at the age of 14; at Boston's Museum School with William James and Philip Leslie Hale in 1917; and in Provincetown after 1917-1918 with Charles W. Hawthorne; with Max Bohm, Richard Miller, Garrett Beneker, George Elmer Browne and E.A. Webster in Provincetown; and in Paris after 1919 at the Academy de la Grande Chaumiere, the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Academie Colarossi and with John Singer Sargent in Boston as late as 1924-1925.

Whorf was an Associate and a full Academician of the National Academy of Design (1947) and a member of the American Water Color Society; the Florida Water Color Society; The Beachcombers; and the Provincetown Art Association. He was given his first solo exhibition in 1924 at the Grace Horne Gallery in Boston and the Milch Galleries in New York gave him 32 solo exhibitions. Awards include medals the California Water Color Society; Art Institute of Chicago (1939, 1943) and an honorary M.A. from Harvard University in 1939.

The artist's work is represented at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston); Metropolitan Museum of Art; M.I.T.; Fogg Art Museum; Addison Gallery of American Art; Amherst College Art Museum; John Herron Art Institute; Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum; Worcester Art Museum; Montclair Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; RI School of Design; Corcoran Gallery of Art; St. Louis Museum of Art; Butler Art Institute; National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden; Pitti Palace, Florence, Italy; Yale University; Baltimore Museum of Art; Hickory Museum of Art; St. Louis Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art and more.