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Virgil Williams

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Artist's Biography

Virgil Williams was one of California's first great landscape painters, coming to the state for the first time in 1862. Williams was raised in Taunton, Massachusetts and studied art in Paris and Rome from 1853 to 1860. In 1862 he settled in San Francisco and spent three years here as one of the first professional artists on the West Coast. In the summer of 1863, he accompanied Albert Bierstadt on his first excursion to Yosemite Valley and returned there in 1865 with Thomas Hill. He then moved back to Massachusetts and thrived as one of the most successful artists in Boston until 1871 when California lured him back, this time for good. He was hired in 1874 as the first director of the California School of Design that quickly developed into the best art school west of the Mississippi. Williams' duties as a teacher limited his production as a painter, but his works, though rare, show great skill and sophistication.