William Joseph Eastman

b. 1888 — d. 1950

Born in Cleveland, William Eastman attended the Cleveland School of Art, graduating in 1912. That summer he moved to New York and studied briefly at the Art Students League. The following year he returned to Cleveland to become an instructor at the Cleveland School of Art, a position he held until his death. He had first solo exhibition in 1911 at the studio he shared with Walter Heller. In 1913 Eastman befriended one of his students, Charles Burchfield, and the two became frequent sketching companions. Around 1915 Eastman began experimenting with gold- and silver-leaf grounds in paintings based on “principles of pure design.” He exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1919–50). On sabbatical from the art school in 1922, he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and spent the following year painting in France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In the summer of 1925 he returned to Europe to paint. He directed the Eastman-Bolton Gallery, 1926–38, a decorative-design firm that he cofounded. In the summer of 1930 Eastman went on another painting excursion to France, Italy, and Holland. In 1931 he was elected president of the Cleveland Society of Artists. The following year he organized the city’s first artist’s Curb Market to stimulate sales of local artists’ work. During the 1930s and 1940s his paintings appeared in solo exhibitions in Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. In the summer of 1939 he made the first of many painting trips to the American West and Mexico. On returning from one of these trips in 1950, Eastman died of a heart attack. The Cleveland Institute of Art organized a memorial exhibition of his work the following year. "Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 227