After graduating from high school in Ravenna, William Howe worked as a clerk in his hometown until the Civil War, which he spent assigned to duty at the Johnson Island Prison on Lake Erie. After the war he became a traveling sales representative for several dry-goods companies, based first in Grand Rapids, Michigan, then in Saint Louis, Missouri. In the latter city, he met his future wife, Julia M. Clark, whom he married in 1876. Two years later he took up lessons in drawing, and in 1879, at age thirty-five, he went to Europe to pursue artistic study.
Howe enrolled at the Düsseldorf Akademie in early 1880, but he left after eighteen months because of philosophical conflicts with what he termed Prussian "militarism." Moving to Paris, he studied under the Austrian cattle painter Otto de Thoren and, after de Thoren's death in 1889, under Félix de Vuillefroy. Howe remained in Europe until 1893 (except for an 1884 visit to Saint Louis), often exhibiting his paintings of cattle in the Paris Salon. He traveled regularly, usually spending summers in Holland, where he sketched with the artist Anton Mauve.
Upon his return to the United States, Howe settled in Bronxville, becoming the "founder" of the artists' colony there. In Bronxville he sketched landscape and animals. He had exhibited at the National Academy in 1884, during his visit home. His second appearance in an Academy annual was in 1894, and on this occasion was elected to Associate membership. Thereafter Howe's works were seen in virtually every Academy exhibition until a few years before his death.
He made several trips back to Europe but by 1902 was spending summers in Old Lyme, Connecticut; he took an active interest in the artists' colony there. In later years his activities were restricted by ill health.
JD
