WILLIAM LINDSAY TAYLOR (1906-1968)
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Biography • William Lindsay Taylor (1906-1968)
William Lindsay Taylor was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. As a young boy, he came to America in 1910 where his family settled in Ridgefield, New Jersey, which had been an art enclave since the 1890s. Taylor’s father was a skilled stonemason who did ornamental carving for many New York buildings, including the Flatiron Building and the Sherry Netherlands Hotel. One of four children, Taylor distinguished himself as an artist and athlete in his youth, becoming a national gymnastics champion in the early 1930s.
William Lindsay Taylor studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller, John Sloan, and Kimon Nicolaides at the Art Students League in the late 1920s. Taylor also studied at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. He was selected as a Tiffany Fellow in 1930. While at the Tiffany Foundation’s Laurelton Hall in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, Taylor met fellow artist Virginia Snedeker whom he would later marry. On the recommendation of his teacher Nicolaides, Taylor first showed at the G.R.D. Gallery in the early 1930s. Nicolaides was the director of the gallery. In Taylor’s paintings of the 1930s, he captured the energy of the city in industry, transportation, and circus subjects, as well as landscapes from his home state of New Jersey. His painting Tow of the New York City harbor was reproduced in The New York Times on May 3, 1931. Taylor had a solo exhibition at the Eighth Street Playhouse Gallery in May of 1935. The Greenwich Village Eighth Street Playhouse was at the center of the art world in the 1930s, designed by the great architect Frederick Kiesler in 1929. The new Whitney Museum opened down the street in 1931 and Hans Hoffman began holding his art classes at the Playhouse in 1938. Art exhibitions continued at the Playhouse through the 1940s.
In the 1930s, William Lindsay Taylor gained recognition and was invited to participate in numerous art invitationals, including annual exhibitions at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1934, 1938, 1940) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1939, 1940). In 1939, Taylor exhibited Whipple Valley, Lyme, New Hampshire in the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco. Taylor also participated in the Artists for Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1942 and 1945.
In 1942, Taylor was drafted into the Army and sent to Louisiana for training. He and Virginia Snedeker married in August before Taylor was sent overseas. They settled in Ridgefield, New Jersey, finding it continued to be a community supportive of artists. Taylor served in North Africa, France, and Germany. He returned home in 1945. With a wife and a family on the way, Taylor took a job specializing in silk-screening at Meissner Color Craft, a printing firm in New York.