Frederick Ballard Williams

In 1901, Williams had his first exhibition at the National Academy and won a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. His work was composed almost entirely of landscape paintings and of outdoor scenes peopled with idealized, elegantly-clad women. In 1910, he took a trip with painters Thomas Moran, Elliott Daingerfield, Douglas Parshall and Edward Henry Potthast to the Grand Canyon and other western sites.^[2] The result was an expansion of Williams' subject matter and a series of Californian landscapes.^[3] Williams carried out field studies of the landscapes that were the subjects of his work, but painted in his studio. He believed in the separation between art and its subject, and that an artist's idealistic vision could serve and augment his subject matter.^[3]

William's work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hickory Museum of Art, the Swope Art Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. In 1944, William's Burke Mountain, Vermont was purchased for the Hickory Museum of Art, becoming the first painting in the museum's collection.^[5] He was the recipient of numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Isidor Gold Medal of the National Academy of Design in 1909.^[3]

• National Academy profile and biography of Frederick Ballard Williams
• The Trio at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Archived 2015-09-20 at the Wayback Machine
• The Echo at the Milwaukee Museum of Art
• Three exhibition catalogs, available from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries.