The portraitist William Cotton studied with Andreas Anderson and Joseph Rodefer DeCamp at the Cowles Art School, Boston, before moving to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens. An early success came when he was awarded the Julius Hallgarten Prize in the Academy annual exhibition of 1907.
Cotton was a founder of the National Association of Portrait Painters and a member of the Newport (R.I.) Art Association. He executed mural decorations for the Capitol Theater, New York, and the pavilion at Easton's Beach, Newport. His travels included visits to England, France, Germany, and Italy.
Well respected as a portrait painter, Cotton also was a skilled caricaturist. He worked for the New Yorker magazine in 1939 as well as for Vanity Fair. He also wrote plays that were produced in Boston, Detroit, and New York in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
