Impressionist William Chadwick focused on portrait and landscape subjects and spent much time at the artists colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut. He had a strong reputation among his colleagues but was not greatly known beyond his own circle.

He was born in Dewsbury, England, and emigrated to New York City where friends from the Art Students League encouraged him, age 23, to paint at Old Lyme, Connecticut. This experience redirected him from portrait and figure subjects to landscapes, and he spent many future summers at Old Lyme.

In New York, he shared studio space with Will Howe Foote and Harry Hoffman and summers with them at Old Lyme, and eventually these three artists and their families moved to Old Lyme.

In New York he had studied with Joseph De Camp at the Art Students League, and at Old Lyme was much influenced by Willard Metcalf and Walter Griffin. He married Pauline Bancroft of Wilmington, Delaware, and they traveled extensively in Italy from 1910 to 1912. In 1915, they purchased a home in Old Lyme, and lived there for the next forty years. He also painted at Monhegan Island, Maine, Vermont, and Bermuda.

In 1927, Chadwick's first one-man show was hosted by The Telfair Academy in Savannah, Georgia, and in 1963, a memorial show of his work was held in Old Lyme.

Source:
"Connecticut and American Impressionism", The William Benton Museum of Art, Introduction by Harold Spencer