William Cotton

American (1880-1958)

William Henry Cotton was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1880. He studied painting with Joseph DeCamp and Andreas Anderson at the Cowles Art School in Boston, and then at the Académie Julian in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens. Cotton was a founder of the National Association of Portrait Painters and a member of the Newport Art Association. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York City; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He was among a number of American artists invited by the government of France to exhibit at the Musée du Luxembourg. After a successful career as a portrait painter, Cotton worked for Vanity Fair from 1931 to 1936 as an illustrator. Eleanor Roosevelt called his drawing of her for Vanity Fair, “her favorite character picture.” Beginning in 1932, he was an illustrator for the New Yorker. In 1931 the New York Repertory Company produced a comedy Cotton wrote, “The Bride the Sun Shines On.” He also painted mural decorations for New York City theaters, including the Capitol, Apollo and Selwyn theaters.