| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Born in Wandsworth, London, in 1909, William Townsend knew very early on that he wanted to be an artist. William studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts at the University of London. In addition to his artistic pursuits, William also had a successful career in advertising, public relations, photo-journalism and publishing before, in his early 40s, he left it all behind to pursue his art fulltime.
William was a regular visiting professor at the University of Alberta and at the Banff School of Fine Arts, where he later became the head of painting. This was also where William started painting the Canadian landscape. His oil paintings celebrate and worship nature and wide-open spaces. William wanted the viewer to feel like he did – wide-eyed like a child in the presence of beauty and wonder.
William’s pieces have been exhibited throughout Canada, the United States and England. William’s work can be found in the collections of the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Hong Kong Bank of Vancouver, the Imperial Bank of Commerce in Calgary, the Royal Bank of Canada in Scotland, the JUJU Paper Corporation in Japan, and Fortune Energy Inc. as well as number of private collections throughout the world. He also appeared as a guest on several television shows.
William Townsend passed away in 1973 in Banff, Alberta; he was 64. |