William Edward Norton

William Edward Norton
American
(1843-1916)

Great Yarmouth, Quay No. 1, oil on canvas; 34"x48" (image)
38"x52" (with frame), s.l.r. and titled verso.

Born in Boston into a family of shipbuilders, William Edward Norton’s thoughts were never far from the sea. As a young man, Norton enrolled at Harvard Medical School, but took his early artistic training at the Lowell Institute. He also appears to have studied under George Inness. Norton opened a studio in Boston and painted extensively along the coast of Massachusetts and Maine, where he was one of the early artists to explore the artistic potential of Monhegan Island. (A ledge on the island’s south side is named after him.) In the early 1870’s, the artist went abroad to study in Paris, before locating permanently in London, where he maintained a studio specializing in marine subjects. Norton achieved considerable acclaim in Europe, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and at the Paris Salon from 1895 to 1898. He also exhibted at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and his painting “Fog on the Grand Banks” was shown at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.

Norton returned from Europe at the dawning of the twentieth century, this time opening a studio in New York City. In the U.S., the artist again achieved significant success, winning the Osborne Prize for marine painting in 1905 and again in 1906. He died in New York in 1916.

Work by William Edward Norton can be found in the collections of the Chrysler Museum, the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, ME.), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Maine Historical Society, Vassar College, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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