Known for his unpretentious landscape works in oil and watercolor, painter Willilam Swift Daniell was born in San Francisco, California on April 26, 1865. At age 15 he visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where he first viewed art. A fellow visitor asked to borrow his catalogue, a conversation ensued, and the teenager found himself accompanying the sculptor O. D. Morse back to his studio to see his work. Daniell began his art studies under Morse and, while in Boston, studied painting with Helen M. Knowlton. He then spent three years in Paris at Académies Vitti, Delecluse, and Julian under Jean Paul Laurens. While in Europe, he sketched in Venice, England, and Moret, France.

In 1905 he moved to Los Angeles and established a home ...