William Houghton Pearce Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1864 - d. 1935

William Houghton Sprague Pearce was born August 5, 1864, and died April 15, 1935. Pearce was an American artist born into a cultured and artistic family. His mother was Mary Anna Sprague Pearce— and father was Shadrach Houghton Pearce. Shadrach ran a Chinese importing business that was very successful. William was thirteen years younger than his older brother and painter, the expatriate, Charles Sprague Pearce, who had moved to Paris in 1873. There Charles studied with Leon Bonnet, and became the better- known artist of the Pearce family. The two brothers regularly communicated for four decades – exchanging ideas about their art through letters, photographs and with several personal visits. Charles died in France in 1914, while William continued to paint while earning his living employed by the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company. He often hung his paintings on the walls of that company. His works were also used to illustrate yearly calendars. William also composed music, limericks and wrote stories under the pseudonym of Carol Vox. A longtime friend and fellow-artist, H. Boylston Dummer, illustrated some of his children’s books. In 1889, William was married Miriam Dix Badlam of Dorchester. Together they reared three children (Harold, Charles and Miriam), in Newton, MA. William specialized in landscape paintings that favored the subject of cows and sunset images. During summers he painted in a family country residence in Walpole, MA. He also painted in Rockport, Provincetown, and the Berkshires as well as the marshes of Lynn, MA. Painters Lester Stevens and Marshall Johnson were friends who joined Pearce painting in the field. He died in 1935 and was interred in the Cedar Grove Cemetery, Dorchester, MA.