William Page was born on January 03, 1811 in Albany, New York, United States. He was the son of Levi and Tamer (Gale) Dunnel Page. In 1819, when the family moved to New York, the boy of eight was already making drawings of heads, and a likeness of his mother was considered "remarkably correct".
William Page entered Joseph Hoxie's classical school and afterward went to a public school. At the age of eleven he won a prize for a sepia drawing from the American Institute. Three years later he was taken out of school and placed in the law office of Frederic de Peyster, who, becoming convinced that the lad was not qualified to distinguish himself in the legal profession, took him to Colonel John Trumbull, who advised him to "stick to the law. " In 1825 William Page began the study of drawing and painting under James Herring. In 1826 he became the pupil of S. F. B. Morse and at the National Academy, where he received a silver medal for drawing. At the age of seventeen he joined the Presbyterian church and determined to prepare himself for the ministry. To this end he studied for a short time at Andover and at Amherst, but after about two years he suddenly changed his mind and made a prompt return to portrait painting in Albany. He was then nineteen.
Page moved to New York and continued painting portraits with success. In 1844 he went to Boston with his wife, where they made a stay of three years. Many of his best portraits were painted at this period. His sitters included John Quincy Adams, Josiah Quincy, Charles Sumner, James Russell Lowell, Wendell Phillips, Charles W. Eliot, and Colonel R. G. Shaw. Several of these portraits are in Harvard Memorial Hall. In 1849 Page went to Italy and remained there eleven years, for the most part living in Rome, Florence, and Venice. There he was considered the leading American painter of the day and enjoyed the friendship of eminent literary and artistic personages.
He made a special study of Titian's works and tried to discover the secret of their color. It is probable that his own later work suffered in respect of originality and spontaneity from his excessive preoccupation with the methods of the Venetian masters. Much of his work was experimental, but at his best he was a remarkable portraitist. His drawing was especially strong. He became intensely interested in an alleged death-mask of Shakespeare and made a trip to Germany in 1874 especially to study it and make several copies in color. One of these is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
He was an academician, and from 1871 to 1873 he was president of the National Academy. From 1860 to the time of his death he practised his profession in New York. He lectured to the students of the National Academy, numbered Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, and the Brownings among his friends, and was a picturesque as well as important figure in the art world. His portraits of Governors Marcy and Fenton are in the New York City Hall, his "Ruth and Naomi" belongs to the New York Historical Society, a Holy Family is owned by the Boston Athen'um, five of his portraits, including those of John Quincy Adams and William Lloyd Garrison, with a half-length "Ceres, " are in the Boston Art Museum, and "The Young Merchants" is in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. One of his most important historical pieces, "Farragut's Triumphal Entry into Mobile Bay, " was purchased by a committee and presented to the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia in 1871. During the last years of his life Page had a home at Eagleswood, New Jersey, where George Inness was his neighbor and intimate friend. They were both Swedenborgians. Page died at Tottenville, Staten Island, at the age of seventy-four on September 30, 1885.
( This Canvas Art Print will look stunning on any interio...)
William Page was a member of Swedenborgian Church.
William Page was married to Lavinia Twibill. After three children had been born to them, they fell out and divorced. Then in 1844 he was married to Sara A. Dougherty. While William was living in Italy, he obtained a divorce from his second wife, and in 1858 Page married Sophia S. Hitchcock, by whom he had six children.
