William Nicoll Cresswell

William Nicoll Cresswell was born on March 12, 1818, in Shoreditch, London, England. After studies with several British painters, possibly including E.W. Cook and William Clarkson Stanfield, he emigrated to Canada West in 1848, settling with his family on a remote farm in Tuckersmith Township (later Seaforth, Ontario) in Huron County. In 1865, part of the family lot came into his possession and he ordered bricks to build a house. The following year, in 1866, he married Elizabeth R. Thompson.

Though he lived on a farm, Cresswell was primarily a painter and quickly established himself professionally. He began exhibiting at the Upper Canada Provincial Exhibition in 1856 and continued to exhibit there annually until 1867. He traveled extensively throughout Canada to gather subject matter for his work, visiting Georgian Bay in 1865, Quebec and New Hampshire in 1866, Lake Nipigon in northern Ontario in 1876, and the Maritimes in the 1880s, including time on the Gaspé Peninsula and Grand Manan in New Brunswick.

In 1874, Cresswell was elected a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, and in 1880 he became a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He also exhibited his work at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, England in 1886. Cresswell was known as an art educator, teaching Robert Ford Gagen beginning in 1863 and George Agnew Reid starting in 1876 when Reid was sixteen years old.

Cresswell's paintings were primarily landscapes in rural or wilderness settings, animal scenes, and maritime subjects showing coastal scenes from the Atlantic. His maritime work showed the influence of Stanfield, a noted painter of maritime scenery. His style evolved from hard luminosity in his early paintings to a broader, more generalized handling over time. In 1887, seeking relief from the cold climate, Cresswell traveled to southern California for the winter and considered relocating there permanently. However, he died on June 19, 1888, at his home in Seaforth at the age of 70 from inflammation of the lungs before he could carry out these plans.