On the Shenandoah

William Louis Sonntag was born in East Liberty (now part of present-day Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, in 1822 and moved to Cincinnati with his family the following year. Primarily a self-taught artist, Sonntag gained acclaim for his landscape painting while exhibiting his works in Cincinnati. Sonntag took two trips abroad in the 1850s, spending the majority of his time in Italy, before settling and establishing his studio in New York in 1857. Over the course of his career, he took sketching trips to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, among others, entranced by the mountainous American landscape. His work is now in the collections of numerous institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California.