William Sommer

William Sommer (1867–1949) was an American Modernist painter.

William Sommer was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1867. He was largely self-taught, but time-honored instruction early on from performer and announcement lithographer Julius Melchers. He apprenticed subsequently the Detroit Calvert Lithograph Company for seven years but in 1890 he traveled to Europe where he trained past Professors Johann Herterich, Ludwig Schmid, and Adolph Menzel. In 1907 he fashionable a position as soon as the Otis Lithograph Company of Cleveland, Ohio and in 1911 he co-founded the Kokoon Arts Club to promote broadminded art in Cleveland. In 1914 he relocated to Brandywine, Ohio. He worked on several large-scale murals for the Federal Art Project, including Rural Homestead in the Geneva, Ohio declare office.

Artist William Sommer spent most of his enthusiasm in Summit County close Brandywine Falls. Sommer was an usual leader of the "Cleveland School," a action of Cleveland-based artists who were active from the teenage years through the mid-1940s. These artists formed the core of an art community whose size and ruckus paralleled the mass and simulation of Cleveland during that period. Sommer painted from the position of the 20th century into the 1940s, absorbing the ideas of the Cubists and other adventurous artists of that period and integrating these concepts and techniques into his own work. His subjects were thoroughly rooted in the American midwest, however; favorite subjects included young kids and farm scenes.

He continued to paint until his death in 1949.
Hart Crane dedicated his 1927 poem Sunday Morning Apples to Sommer.