William Wallace Wotherspoon (1821 – Oct. 11, 1888) was an American landscape painter who is known for his paintings of

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

's White Mountains.

Biography

William Wallace Wotherspoon was born in New York City in 1821. Not much is known about his family or education, apart from the fact that his father was a merchant and he took over the business when his father died. He attended the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

in the early 1840s and frequently exhibited paintings there over the next four decades. Beginning in 1846, he spent several years traveling around Europe for further informal study of art, much of it in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. Paintings from this period of Lake Nemi and ancient Roman ruins were praised by critics. On his return to the United States, Wotherspoon was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design, and he became a founding member of the Artists' Fund. The painter Eliza Pratt Greatorex studied with him for a time. Wotherspoon's style was strongly influenced by the Hudson River School, and many of his earliest American landscapes were views of New Hampshire's White Mountains. He also painted the

Litchfield Hills The Northwest Hills (also known as the Litchfield Hills or Northwest Highlands) are a geographic region of the U.S. state of Connecticut located in the northwestern corner of the state. It is roughly coterminous with the boundaries of Litchfield ...

area of Connecticut. He died in

Utica, New York Utica () is a Administrative divisions of New York, city in the Mohawk Valley and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The List of cities in New York, tenth-most-populous city in New York State, its population was 65,283 ...

, in 1888.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wotherspoon, William Wallace 1821 births 1888 deaths 19th-century American painters 19th-century male artists American landscape painters