William Sherman Potts [1876-1930]
American | New York
The Garden Party, 1895
Oil on board
14  x 12 inches
Signed and dated at lower left. ‘1895’.

W S Potts graduated from Yale in 1895 and this may be the courtyard with Yale’s dorm buildings in the background.
ABOUT THE ARTIST

A portrait painter including miniatures, and long-time illustrator for Good Housekeeping Magazine, William Potts lived in New York City and Noank, Connecticut. He studied illustration with Charles Flagg and also was enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Academie Julian in Paris as a student of Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. His portrait, Katherine Forest, dated 1915 is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Memberships included the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, American Society of Miniature Painters, Mystic Art Association (Connecticut), which he served as President, and the American Artists Professional League.

Exhibition venues were Pennsylvania Academy, 1905; Society of Independent Artists, 1917-1918; Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, 1929; and Art Institute of Chicago.

Citation: Who’s Who in American Art.