William Samuel Horton

Nocturnal of Gstaad

A landscape painter, William Horton lived and worked primarily in Paris where he was a member of the Societe Moderne, the Societe Internationale, and the Salon d'Automne. He was a wealthy man and a friend of artists who became famous such as Monet and Degas and other Impressionists. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was raised in North Dakota. His first art-related job was as an illustrator for Northwest Magazine. Disinherited by his family because of his commitment to art, he studied first at the Art Institute of Chicago and then at the Art Student's League and the National Academy of Design in New York. He married in 1892, and the couple went to Paris where he enrolled in the Academy Julian and where they lived the remainder of their lives, becoming very active in the American-French art community and exhibiting regularly in the salons. Between 1926 and 1928, on a return to the United States, he did a series of views of New York skyscrapers because he was inspired by their appearance of establishing the position of human beings on the earth.