1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Page, William

PAGE, WILLIAM (1811–1885), American artist, was born at Albany, New York, on the 3rd of January 1811. He studied for the ministry at the Andover Theological Seminary in 1828–1830 and in later life became a Swedenborgian. He received his training in art from S. F. B. Morse and in the schools of the National Academy of Design, and in 1836 became a National Academician. From 1849 to 1860, he lived in Rome, where he painted portraits of his friends Robert and Elizabeth Browning. The first collection of Lowell’s Poems (1843) was dedicated to Page, who was also a friend of W. W. Story. In 1871–1873 he was president of the National Academy of Design. He died at Tottenville, Staten Island, New York, on the 1st of October 1885. Besides numerous portraits he painted “Farragut at the Battle of Mobile,” belonging to the Tsar of Russia; a “Holy Family,” in the Boston Athenaeum; and “The Young Merchants,” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. He modelled and painted several portraits of Shakespeare, based on the Becker “death mask.” He wrote A New Geometrical Method of Measuring the Human Figure (1860).