William Wendt was a landscape painter born in Germany. He emigrated to Chicago in 1880 and studied briefly at the Art Institute. Essentially self-taught, he learned to become a great technician by means of his keenly honed skills in the observation of nature. He married Julia Bracken in 1906 and moved to Los Angeles where he helped co-found the California Art Club in 1909. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1912 and that year moved to Laguna Beach where he was very instrumental in establishing the art colony there. His style changed over the years. Initially he painted in the more acceptable American Impressionist manner, but gradually became more involved in a more abstract style. He died in Laguna Beach in 1946.
