William Guy Wall (1792-after 1864)

Early Hudson River landscape painter William Guy Wall was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was already an accomplished artist when he emigrated to New York City in 1818. He became well-known for his watercolors of the Hudson River, and twenty of his paintings were engraved for the Hudson River Portfolio, which went through several editions between 1820 and 1828. In 1828 Wall moved to Newport, Rhode Island. He later lived in New Haven, Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York before returning to Ireland in 1837. He remained in Dublin until 1856, working as a background painter for a sillouettist, when he returned to America and settled in Newburgh, New York until 1862. After this he returned to Dublin. The last record we have of him is in 1864 in Dublin. Wall was a founder of the National Academy of Design and exhibited there, as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Apollo Association, Boston Athenaeum and the Brooklyn Art Association. Wall was skilled at creating the sort of atmospheric effects that were further developed by later Hudson River School artists. The artist’s work is held in the collections of the New York Historical Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.