William Henry Clapp was born in Montreal, Canada in 1879. His family moved to Oakland, California six years later, but eventually returned to Montreal where, in 1900, the artist began a four-year training period at the Montreal Art Association under the direction of William Brymner. Clapp pursued further studies in Paris during 1904-1908 at the Académie Julian, Académie Colarossi, and Ecole de la Grande Chaumière. During the course of these years, the artist became aware of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French art, drawing particular inspiration from works by the Impressionist painters Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro.
By 1917, when Clapp resettled in Piedmont, a small town adjoining Oakland, the artist had received numerous acclamations and honors. He was awarded the Jessie Dow Prize by the Montreal Art Association in 1908, offered membership in the Canadian Art Club in 1912, and given a solo exhibition at both the Johnson Art Galleries and the Arts Club of Montreal in 1914. His arrival in California coincided with his appointment as instructor of life drawing at the California School of Arts and Crafts.
With his international training and extensive professional experience, Clapp became an important and influential member of the Society of Six. This group, which began to meet informally in 1917 in order to encourage and criticize its members' experiments with bright light and color, began to exhibit together in 1923. Clapp's honors continued to accrue over the remaining period of his life. Some of his more impressive accomplishments came as director of the Oakland Art Gallery; for over thirty years, from 1918-1952, Clapp helped introduce the Bay Area to modern art, bringing the latest European developments to the attention of Northern California artists and residents. Simultaneously, Clapp continued to paint, exhibiting the fruits of this labor at a number of galleries and museums. In 1954, the year of Clapp's death, The Oakland Museum organized a major retrospective of the artist's work. His paintings are represented today in many important private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Oakland Museum; and the Montreal Art Association.
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