Nathaniel Dirk was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied at the Art Students League of New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. His teachers at the League were Boardman Robinson, Max Weber and Kenneth Hayes Miller. He taught at the League in the summer of 1939, and from 1947 through 1951. He gave his lectures on "Color for the Artist" at the League from 1957 through 1960, and was to have given the same series in 1961 had he not died unexpectedly on January 3, 1961.

In 1937 and 1938, he was a member of the Board of Control of the Art Students League. His paintings are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. He was a frequent exhibitor at the Whitney, the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Audubon Artists. His work has also been shown at the Metropolitan Museum, MOMA, the National Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Minneapolis Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy, and at other places. He won three prizes at the annual exhibitions of the Audubon Artists. '

Between 1927 and 1957, he had thirteen one-man exhibitions in New York, not to mention others in other parts of the country. He was a Director of Artists Equity and President of the Cape Ann Society of Modem Art. He was formerly Director of the Contemporary Art Center, the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association, New York City.