William Wallace Gilchrist, an Impressionist painter of landscapes, genre scenes, interiors, and an accomplished portrait painter, grew up in Pennsylvania. In his youth he spent summers on the Maine coast at Prout's Neck where he knew Winslow Homer and was one of the few artists to receive friendly criticism from the artist. Throughout his short career, due to an early death, he was active on the coast north of Portland, Maine.

He was an influence on the artists of Boston and Pennsylvania during his lifetime. Though his work is rare because he was not a prolific artist, his paintings were discovered in the late 1990s in the old family home in Maine, where his descendents still live. They were exhibited and sna...