William Robert Steene - 1920s New York Street scene in Snow - Oil painting American Impressionist - Oil painting on canvas - Signed - circa 1920s Canvas size 12x16" - Frame size: 18x22" Artist Biography William Robert Steene (1887 - 1965) was active/lived in New York. He is known for Portraits of notable persons, marine, figures and history scene easel painting, murals. William Robert Steene was born at Syracuse, New York on August 18, 1887. He was a nationally known portrait painter and muralist. Steene studied at the Academy Colarossi* and Academy Julian* in Paris, after his initial art education at the Art Students’ League and National Academy of Design* in New York City. Among his portraitures possibly familiar to local residents are: President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi; Governor Henry Whitfield of Mississippi; Dr. Karl Meyer, head of Cook County Hospital at Chicago; E.V Richards, president of the Navy League of America and Paramount Richards Theatres; and golfing legend, Robert Trent “Bobby” Jones. (Who’s Who in America, Vol. 31, 1960-1961 and Bradford-O’Keefe Burial Book 48, p. 245) Probably William R. Steene's first visit to the Mississippi Gulf Coast was in April 1931, when he was a guest of the Buena Vista Hotel at Biloxi. He had painted in Mississippi earlier in his distinguished art career. Steene had come to Biloxi after completing two portraits. They were of Frank G. Logan (1851-1937), philanthropist and honorary president of the Chicago Art Institute, and Dr. Harry Woodburn Chase (1883-1955), president of the University of Illinois. Mr. Logan's portrait was hung in the Grand Central art gallery at NYC. (The Daily Herald, April 18, 1931, p 2)In 1956, from his Gulf Hills studio, W.R. Steene completed a large mural depicting the 1953 Louisiana Sesquicentennial Celebration, a remembrance of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, at New Orleans. President Eisenhower is at the center of this 50-foot long, ten-foot tall, triptych mural, which took a year to complete. The painting hangs in the Presbytery of the Louisiana State Museum at New Orleans. (The Daily Herald, “Know Your Coast”, November 15, 1957)