Wotherspoon registered in the antique class of the Academy School annually from 1843 through 1847. At the Council meeting of October 15, 1888, the following was entered into the minutes by Thomas Addison Richards, Recording Secretary.
William Wallace Wotherspoon, A.N.A. was born of Scottish parentage, in the City of New York, October 28th, 1821 and died at New York, October 11, 1888.
He was elected an Associate of the National Academy in 1848, at which time, he gave promise of more than ordinary success as a Landscape painter--a promise which was well kept through many years, as shown by his contributions, during his earlier life, to the Annual Exhibitions.
In process of time, the exigencies of his father's large business interests demanded much of his attention, and, at last wholly occupied him, and withdrew from the active practice of his chosen profession. He never, however, forgot his early love of Art, and always, so far as his active business life would permit, maintained his artistic friendships and associations, and still worked with enthusiasm at his easel when leisure kindly allowed, until that pleasure failed him with the affliction of failing sight. He was, in all the conditions of his life, a man of irreproachable character, and was most loved and honored by those who knew him best.
As no documentation concerning Wotherspoon between his student days and his death is known, a speculative scenario may be based upon the minimal information supplied in catalogues of the exhibitions in which he was represented. From 1844 through 1848, exactly the period he was enrolled in the Academy School, the titles of his paintings shown in Academy annuals are all landscape subjects, predominantly sited in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and his various addresses are all in New York. Then, apparently Wotherspoon decided he had gained all he could from his work at the Academy School, and it was time to go abroad, for in the 1849 Annual he showed a view of the House of John Knox, which is in Edinborough, and in 1850, a Scottish landscape. In neither of these years did he list an address, but in 1851 he was resident in Rome when he was represented in the Annual with a composite landscape of Italian scenery. He was again at a New York address when he showed three views of Rome and Naples in the 1852 Annual.
His work was not seen again in an annual until 1855. It is possible Wotherspoon spent some of the 1852-55 period in the South. A painting by him titled Scene Outside a Southern Schoolhouse, dated c.1855, is in the collection of the Hunter Museum, Chattanooga, Tennessee. However, when his work did reappear at the Academy, neither his address nor the subject matter of his paintings had changed over the intervening three years; they remained constant through the annual exhibitions of 1856 and 1857. In 1858 he apparently attempted to expand his audience by sending one, each, of his Scottish and Italian scenes to the Second Annual Exhibition of the Washington (D.C.) Art Association.
Wotherspoon's work appeared in Academy annuals only sporadically thereafter--1863, 1866, 1867, 1870, and 1883--which corresponds with Richards's statement that he became preoccupied with business affairs. His 1870 representation was an odd assortment of three works: views in Shelbourne, New Hampshire, and the Brindisi region of Italy, and a charcoal drawing of Cairo, which suggests the possibility he had made an excursion to Egypt during the period he was based in Italy. Although Academy rules forbade repeated exhibition of a work, the titles of Wotherspoon's entries in the 1863 and 1883 annuals are identical; he either resurrected a subject, or a painting that went unrecognized after a twenty-year interval.