After graduation from Harvard College in 1922, Nathaniel Choate spent three years in Paris studying painting at the Academies Colarossi and La Grand Chaumiere. However, a side trip to Greece convinced him that he should make sculpture his career. He returned to the United States in 1925 and settled in Boston. There he was as art editor of The Youth's Companion Magazine, until 1927, when he removed to Italy, remaining to 1934, making side trips to Morocco and the Sudan in 1932.
Choate gained some critical notice as a result of his one-artist shows held in New York in 1934 and 1938. He exhibited a number of small sculptures of animals and native portrait heads which were inspired by the trips to Morocco, the Sudan, and elsewhere. He won a gold medal from the New York Architectural League in 1937 for his design and craftsmanship in stone carving. This brought him several commissions including those for relief sculptures for the Federal Building at the 1939 New York World's Fair and another for a relief for the Pittman, New Jersey, post office. A group of fish in aluminum was commissioned from Choate by the liner "United States" to decorate the main lounge of that ship. Among his portrait busts was one of Massachusetts governor Robert F. Bradford sculpted in 1948. Choate never completely abandoned painting and, in 1950, executed murals depicting scenes of Haiti and Trinidad for the Calypso Restaurant in Greenwich Village.
In January, 1941, Choate became interested in ceramics and established the Aldham Kilns in Aldham, Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, he stated in an autobiographical sketch written for the National Academy that "my main interest is stonecarving which well outweighs any other interest up to the present."
Choate exhibited his work at the National Academy beginning in 1928, showing mostly animal pieces. He taught for a number of years at the summer school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and privately in New York; he also taught at the Academy from 1963 to 1966.
