A painter of western genre, William Reese was raised on his family's cattle ranch in central Washington state and from that time had a love of horses, which is obvious in many of his western paintings. He also painted landscape, still life and marine scenes.

Reese was educated at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and at Washington State University, Pullman. His grandmother gave him his first art lessons, using a text book by Charles Lederer, Drawing Made Easy. Of that book, Reese said: "I still have it, or what's left of it. I devoured that book."

Although oil was his primary medium, Reese also worked with watercolor, pastel, sculpture, etching and lithography, a...