Inspired by the career of his elder brother, James, William began to work as a portraitist in about 1843. He received few commissions in rural Painesville, so in 1845 he joined his brother New York. He remained in New York for the following five years, but his skill as a portraitist was not sufficient to allow him to compete successfully with the number of more talented colleagues practicing in the city. In 1850 he moved to Buffalo in hopes of finding a more favorable climate to pursue his ambitions, but to no avail. Over the following years he turned to painting animals and sporting scenes, with much greater success. His reputation slowly grew, and by 1856 he had saved enough money to allow him to travel to Europe.
Beard traveled to Dsseldorf, where he became acquainted with Emanuel Leutze and Worthington Whittredge, He subsequently journeyed to Switzerland and Italy before returning to the United States in 1858. In 1860 in was back in to New York, where his allegorical paintings of animals soon brought him considerable attention and praise.
Beard's animal paintings appeared in the Academy's annual exhibitions in quantity, and almost yearly from 1858 until the year of his death. He served on the Academy Council from 1873 to 1875. William was more professionally active than his older brother, however, they shared unchallenged preeminence in their chosen subject specialty, the painting of animals as themselves, in fantasies, and as allegorical representations for humans, often engaged in activities Victorian tastes would not have countenanced pictured naturalistically.
