Whorf's father was a commercial artist and designer. He graduated from Harvard College and then studied at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and in Provincetown with Charles Hawthorne; he also studied at La Grand Chaumiere in Paris.
Whorf's medium was watercolor and subject matter ranged broadly over country and city scenery: fishing, duck hunting, and other sports; village and coastal scenes; crowded street scenes of Boston, New York and Provincetown were among favorite subjects. He would often show them in winter with its attendant blizzards, rains, winds and fogs. Many of his scenes were taken from his travels to North Africa, Canada, the West Indies, and Paris and Brittany in France. His work was exhibited annually at the Vose Galleries in Boston, and beginning in 1926 in New York at Milch Galleries.