Background
He was born at Grafton, Massachussets, in December 10, 1854, the son of William H. and Anna Maria (Darling) Taylor.
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William Ladd Taylor
Edit ProfileEducation
His education in the public schools of Worcester, Massachussets, was supplemented by a course in mechanical drawing.
Having won some success as an illustrator, he was soon enabled to go to Paris, where in 1884-85 he registered as a pupil of G. C. R. Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. As an art student and young artist he was remarkable for the seriousness and conscientiousness of his work--characteristics which remained with him.
Career
For a time he had employment as a draftsman, but found the work exacting and sought restored health in Colorado. Deciding to become an artist, he studied at the newly established Art Students' League of New York. In 1881 moved to Boston, "with more ambition than pennies", and established a small studio on School Street.
Among his earliest important illustrations were those made for the Woods and Lakes of Maine (1884) of Lucius L. Hubbard, whom Taylor accompanied in his adventurous wanderings. By 1888, he had become one of the most popular of American illustrators.
He and his wife settled at Wellesley, Massachussets, where Taylor set up his studio. In it were made almost countless illustrations, notable both for competent documentation and esthetic content.
Taylor became a favorite illustrator of the Ladies' Home Journal, called upon year after year for paintings, suitable for reproduction, of historical, literary, and sentimental subjects. Behind these lay careful and elaborate first-hand studies. Taylor never drew from imagination details which he could secure through travel or by other means. Toward his New England themes he accumulated a great collection of costumes and other antiques. His Bible pictures were based on drawings from Near-Eastern bas-reliefs and other similar documents. He avoided the usual run of studio models, and utilized accommodating friends and neighbors who seemed to him typical.
Leading at Wellesley a life uneventful and somewhat apart from that of other professional artists, Taylor worked incessantly until his last year upon many commissions. Many of the originals of his works were shown to interested visitors at the Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia.
Achievements
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His pictures devoted to the nineteenth century in New England, reprinted in his Our Home and Country (1908), have been justly acclaimed as "an historical record in pictorial form of a period of enormous importance". Files of the Ladies' Home Journal may be valued by collectors very considerably because of Taylor's drawings. Especially important among these are the series, "Those Days in Old Virginia, " the illustrations to accompany Longfellow poems, and the Bible Series, most of them reprinted in Our Home and Country.
Membership
He belonged to the Boston Art Club, but he was not usually represented at its exhibitions.
Personality
He has been described as "an agreeable and gentlemanly person, common-sensed in his views of affairs, pleasant in conversation and well informed in literature". Personally reticent and somewhat austere, he had few of the qualities usually attributed to the artistic temperament.
Interests
Connections
In 1888 he married Mary Alice Fitz, of Norfolk, Va.
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Born
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Died
February 26, 1926 (aged 72) -
Nationality
American