William Coulter (1849-1936)
William Coulter 1849-1936
William Alexander Coulter was born in Glenariff in 1849, the son of a local Coastguard captain. His early life was spent around the harbour and along the shore where he would observe and sketch ships and daily life in the vicinity. When he was 13 he left home to follow a career at sea and spent seven years working on sailing ships and visiting many countries, he continued following his passion for art, sketching in detail ships and life. An accident on board in 1869 forced him to end his career as a seaman, he came ashore to live in San Francisco.
Self taught as an artist and with no work he focused fully on his art, over the following five years he became a regular exhibitor of marine paintings and his work began to be noticed and purchased. By 1876 he had accumulated enough money from sales to travel to Europe and study under some of the leading marine artists of the time, Vilhelm Melbye and Jacob Jacobs were two of the artist he worked with, this took him from Paris to Antwerp, Florence and Lisbon.
When he returned to San Francisco he took up a post as the waterfront artist for the 'Francisco Call' newspaper producing highly detailed pen and ink drawing of maritime news, activities and shipping, at the same time he moved to a waterfront home in Sausalito where he continued to paint and exhibit his work. In 1906 he witnessed the earthquake and subsequent fire that devastated the city, during the fire he produced what is recognized worldwide as the most accurate, eye witness, visual account of the fire that destroyed the waterfront including the Call building where he had worked. The painting was done on a 10 x 5-foot window shade which he salvaged from a collapsed building.
During the reconstruction he was commissioned for five 16' x 18’ pieces for the Assembly Room of the Merchants Exchange building which he completed between 1909 -1920. In 1929 when he was 80 years old, he took a year-long trip back to Ireland visiting Dublin and perhaps Waterfoot and the places he knew as a child. On his return to America he went straight back into painting. At his final exhibition in 1934, aged 85, he presented 75 new works, all completed in his 80s. His work today is sought after by collectors and art galleries worldwide. A unique and historic aspect of his work was the pictorial documentation of the shipping industry of San Francisco over a 65 year period, he passed away at his home in Sausalito in 1936 aged 87.