William A. Coulter, born William Alexander Coulter (March 7, 1849 – March 13, 1936), was an American

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

subjects. Coulter was a native of

Glenariff Glenariff or Glenariffe ( or ) is a valley in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is one of the Glens of Antrim. Like other glens in that area, it was shaped during the Last Glacial Period, Ice Age by giant glaciers. It is sometimes called the ' ...

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...

, in what is today

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. He became an

apprentice Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...

seaman Seaman may refer to: * Sailor, a member of a marine watercraft's crew * Seaman (rank), a military rank in some navies * Seaman (name) (including a list of people with the name) * ''Seaman'' (video game), a 1999 simulation video game for the Seg ...

at the age of 13, and after seven years at sea, came to settle in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in 1869.

Career

In the late 1870s, he went to Europe to study with

marine art Marine art or maritime art is a form of figurative art (that is, painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture) that portrays or draws its main Sea in culture, inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea� ...

ists Vilhelm Melbye,

François Musin François-Etienne Musin (4 October 1820, Ostend - 24 October 1888, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode) was a Belgian painter who specialized in seascapes and scenes of coastal landscapes, rivers and harbours.J. C. Jacobsen Jacob Christian Jacobsen (2 September 1811 – 30 April 1887), mostly known as J. C. Jacobsen, was a Denmark, Danish industrialist and philanthropist best known for founding the brewery Carlsberg Group, Carlsberg. Biography He had no formal acad ...

. In 1896, he joined the art staff of the ''

San Francisco Call ''The San Francisco Call'' was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called ''The San Francisco Call & Post'', the ''San Francisco Call-Bulletin ...

''. Between 1909 and 1920, he painted five 16-by-18-foot murals for the Assembly Room of the Merchants Exchange Building. During the course of his life, his paintings chronicled the history of

shipping Freight transport, also referred as ''Freight Forwarding'', is the physical process of transporting Commodity, commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it h ...

and

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...

in the

and San Pablo bays.

Death

Coulter resided in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

until his death on March 13, 1936, at the age of 87, in his

Sausalito Sausalito (Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, and about north of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. Sausalito's p ...

home. Funeral services were held at the Robert F. Russell Mortuary in Mill Valley.

Legacy

William A. Coulter's most famous work was his ''San Francisco Fire, 1906''. The SS William A. Coulter was a

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. Mass ...

which was constructed and deployed in 1943, and named in his honor. In 1923, the

United States Post Office The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...

issued a commemorative 20-cent stamp with one of Coulter's paintings. The

Hawaii State Art Museum The No. 1 Capitol District Building, on the site of the former Armed Services YMCA Building, now houses the Hawaii State Art Museum and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. History While they were both in the cabinet, under King ...

, the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

, the

Oakland Museum of California The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cali ...

, the

Orange County Museum of Art The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration o ...

(Newport Beach, CA), and the

U.S. Navy Museum The National Museum of the United States Navy, or U.S. Navy Museum for short, is the flagship museum of the United States Navy and is located in the former Breech Mechanism Shop of the old Naval Gun Factory on the grounds of the Washington Navy Y ...

(Washington, DC) are among the public collections holding work by William A. Coulter.AskArt.com
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References

* Hughes, Edan, ''Artists in California 1786-1940'', Sacramento, Crocker Art Museum, 2002. * Severson, Don R. ''Finding Paradise: Island Art in Private Collections'', University of Hawaii Press, 2002, pp. 81–2.

External links

(website of the Paul and Linda Kahn Foundation)

* ttp://www.america-scoop.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=885:fowles-arthur-wellington-1815-1883-uk&catid=226:&lang=fr&Itemid=419 COULTER, WILLIAM ALEXANDER(1849-1936)

Footnotes

1849 births 1936 deaths 19th-century American painters 20th-century American painters American male painters American marine artists American muralists Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area People from Sausalito, California 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists {{US-painter-1840s-stub