William Ballantine Dorsey (1942-2019)

William Ballantine Dorsey 1942-2019
On the evening of April 29, William died after being hit by a pickup truck while walking across a street in Palm Desert, California.

Primarily self-taught, William was best known as a California Landscape Painter. His paintings were reminiscent of the California Impressionists with rich atmospheric perspective and depth. It is important to note that William had difficulty seeing distance due to an eye condition. He would create the illusion of depth with skillful painting techniques and his sophisticated use of color.  

William’s paintings were frequently available on the secondary market, in antique stores and auction houses, where they were often paired with early California painters such as Edgar Payne, William Wendt and Ray Strong. William would joke that when collectors met him, “They were always surprised that I am still alive.”  
   
Born in Washington DC, William developed a love for Alaska as a child when his father was stationed there with the Air Force from 1949 to 1951, before moving to Ojai, California in 1955. Following his graduation from Nordhoff High School, William returned to Alaska in 1961, piloting a Piper Cub. He made the trip in five days. Considering he only had 50 hours of flight experience, it was an astonishing feat at the time. William loved the summer season in Alaska where the optimum light “would last for hours”. Snow-capped Alaskan mountains were a reoccurring theme in the artist’s work.

Sharing his time between California and Alaska for over 30 years, William capitalized on all his skills to earn a living while developing his painting style. He worked as an Alaskan bush pilot, a fisherman, a lumberjack, a boat builder and a song writer, writing songs under contract for Screen Gems-Columbia Music. William wrote songs for the Monkey’s, Tiny Tim, The Partridge Family, Bobbie Gentry and Michael Martin Murphey, among others.  

Dorsey preferred to work under natural light and would construct elaborate skylights to provide the optimum daylight painting conditions within his studio. Often appearing as the quintessential artist, covered in paint from head to toe, William was a wonderful raconteur, sharing stories of his travels, his love for art and his impressive ancestry comprised of notable inventors and pioneers.  

William’s father, Herbert Dorsey Jr., was a Harvard-educated meteorologist who participated in the Byrd expedition to the Antarctic in the late 1930s. He was among the first exploration party to winter at the South Pole. An island was discovered by Herbert during his exploration that bears the Dorsey name. In addition, his father became the first American to drive a dog sled team over the Greenland ice cap in the 1940s. His maternal grandfather, diplomat Joseph Ballantine, was an associate of Cordell Hull, the secretary of state in the Roosevelt administration. His paternal grandfather, physicist and inventor Herbert Dorsey, created the fathometer, an instrument for measuring ocean depths and helped to develop long distance telephone service. His great-uncle, George Dorsey, was a world-renowned anthropologist and author. William was very proud of his family history and kept extensive archives, including some of the equipment his father used half a century ago during his historic expeditions.  

After spending over 50 years in Ojai, William and his wife Mary, moved to the Eastern Sierra in 2004, before moving to Palm Desert in 2010. The natural landscape served as a constant stimulus to the painter. Whether he was painting the hills of Ojai, the California coastal regions, the desert or the mountains of Alaska, each painting was a record of the location executed in his distinctive impressionistic style. When asked what inspired him to paint, William said without hesitation, “The wolf at the door is the muse that drives the paint.”

William Dorsey is survived by his wife Mary Dorsey, stepsons Pablo and Django Grande-Weiss, sister Diana Frantz and brother Herbert Grove Dorsey III.

William B. Dorsey’s FOTM documentation took place in 1998 and was sponsored by Hal Berger. The FOTM Archive contains extensive information about this artist.


The following information from Mary Dorsey, was submitted in 2007:

In 1964 William B Dorsey mapped the Copper River Delta for Fish and Game, tagged the fish in wilderness area and painted Alaska. He homesteaded in Tutka Bay and went Salmon seining in the summer and painting in the winter.

His paintings can be found throughout Alaska.

Landscapes of California are 'home' to the art of the plein-air painter, William Dorsey. The dominant theme in the artist's oils is the scenery he experienced while growing up in California. Come rainy season, William would traipse with his father, meteorologist Herbert Grove Dorsey, on weekly trips along the coast to maintain weather station gauges. The Dorseys meandered behind locked gates on ranches, from Pine Mountain Summit to San Simeon and Hearst Castle when it was still a private ranch, around Lake Nacimiento, and even along the Melville Mine Road near Big Sur. The trips ended but not the memories, and hidden trails through meadows and eucalyptus would become recurrent themes in the artist's work.

That same pristine beauty of the pre-war landscape that impressed early-day master impressionists similarly transfixed Dorsey. "I was seeing a lot of California that was disappearing," Dorsey recalls. His wife, Mary, says that her husband sometimes paints on location but more often paints from memories. She cites Harmony, a tiny Central Coast town, population about 10, as remaining "much the same." But nothing else is so unchanged.

Light and color are essential in plein air, or painting in the open air. Twilight is a favorite Dorsey time. "It's not painstaking detail but what you can accomplish in strokes. I try to recreate a moment," says Dorsey, who paints standing up. "You don't even have time in that moment to mix colors." Titles of paintings in Dorsey's portfolio reflect nature and specific locations such as "Grace of Eucalyptus" and "Coachella Valley, Winter Homestead."

Dorsey's father was in the Air Force, prompting almost yearly moves and major adjustments for a young kid. "Travel was in my blood. I didn't develop a lot socially because I was kind of cross-eyed," recalls Dorsey. He lived in a number of states before landing in the Southland. Dorsey's attachment to art was clear even at Nordhoff High in Ojai, where he devised ways to circumvent conventional classes: "I took two art classes a day and hid the rest of the time. I created a huge body of work hidden away in Ventura County schools somewhere, he says.

Fleet of foot as well, Dorsey found jobs, one arboreal in nature. "I trimmed almost every eucalyptus tree in Ventura County," he said. "Now, I just paint them."

Dorsey would go on to graduate from the Famous Artist Course in Westport, Connecticut. But gallivanting about the countryside is a lifelong habit. "My dad went to Harvard. My mom went to Smith. My sister went to Berkeley, and I went to Alaska. I thought that would handle my BA and MFA."

His major influences have been the early California Impressionists, as well as Alaskan painter Sydney Laurence. The eclectic Dorsey brims with talent in many other areas, from being a pilot to writing songs (sung by such groups as the Monkees) and playing the keyboard. Dorsey calls his wife Mary an important stabilizer. "She runs the other end of the zoo. If I had to worry about the phone bill, I couldn't paint." The prolific master can even count posters in his stable of works, but the medium of painting is still his most cherished. "When you have one of these scenes, it opens up the world," he says reflectively.

William Dorsey was born in 1942. As a twentieth-century California painter, Dorsey has had work in auctions alongside early California Masters of plein-air painting.

Dorsey is a 1960 graduate of the Famous Artist Course, Westport, Connecticut, and is currently a resident of Ojai, California, and Red Mountain via Homer, Alaska. He was influenced and inspired by Alaskan painter Sydney Laurence and the early California Impressionists.

Painting oil landscapes primarily of California and Alaska, Dorsey travels extensively. He has painted and exhibited his work in Stowe, Vermont; Taos, New Mexico; Sun Valley, Idaho; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; as well as California and Alaska.