High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In 1926, De Kooning entered the United States as a stowaway on a British freighter, the SS Shelly, to Newport News, Virginia. He then went by ship to Boston, and took a train from Boston to Rhode Island, and eventually settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter until moving to a studio in Manhattan in 1927. In 1929 he met the artist and critic John D. Graham, who would become an important stimulus and supporter. He also met the painter Arshile Gorky, who became one of De Kooning's closest and most influential friends.