William Worcester Churchill

William Worcester Churchill was a Boston painter of women in quiet, carefully arranged interiors: reading, resting or sitting by a window. His work belongs to the Boston School, with soft light, calm moods and refined colour, close in spirit to William Paxton.

He was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1858 and studied at the Boston Museum School from 1877, then in Paris under Léon Bonnat. He was based in Boston for most of his career, where he taught and belonged to the Guild of Boston Artists, and he spent summers painting in Kennebunkport, Maine. He also painted portraits, nudes and landscapes in oil and pastel, and won awards at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 and the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1926.

In Woman Reading on a Settee, look at the way the light falls across the room.