Paintings by William Gaw, March 4-April 3, 1949

William Alexander Gaw was born in San Francisco, California in 1891. He was the son of Irish watercolorist Hugh Gaw. During his childhood, William Gaw studied figure drawing and painting under James Martin Griffin, an Irish artist, for six years until the 1906 earthquake. He enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1908 and began exhibiting locally in 1912. In 1923, Gaw moved across the Bay to Berkeley where he would spend the rest of his life. Gaw experimented with several artistic styles including Cubism, Machinist art, and Post-Impressionism. His palettes were bright and colorful and he painted many still lifes and landscapes from the area around his Berkeley home. During the late 1930s, Gaw taught at the California School of Fine Arts and went on to be appointed head of the art department at Mills College in 1940, a position he held until his retirement in 1958. He died in Berkeley in 1973.

Sources:
Hughes, Edan M. 2002. Artists in California, 1786-1940. 3rd ed. Vol. I, A-K. Crocker Art Museum.
Smithsonian Institution. n.d. “Oral History Interview with William A. Gaw, 1964 Mar. 6.” Archives of American Art. Accessed July 17, 2023. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-william-gaw-11834.