William Cotton Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

William Cotton (1880 - 1958) was a portrait painter. He studied with Andreas Anderson and Joseph Rodefer DeCamp at the Cowles Art School in Boston, before moving to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens. Read the full biography

William Cotton (1880 - 1958) was a portrait painter. He studied with Andreas Anderson and Joseph Rodefer DeCamp at the Cowles Art School in Boston, before moving to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens. An initial success came when he was awarded the Julius Hallgarten Prize in the Academy's annual exhibition of 1907.
Cotton was a founder of the National Association of Portrait Painters and a member of the Newport (RI) Art Association. He has done mural decorations for the Capitol Theatre, New York, and the pavilion at Easton's Beach, Newport. His travels included visits to England, France, Germany and Italy. Highly respected as a portraitist, Cotton was also an accomplished caricaturist. He worked for New Yorker magazine in 1939 and for Vanity Fair. He also wrote plays that were produced in Boston, Detroit, and New York in the late 1920s and early 1930s.