William Otto Emerson

William Otto Emerson (March 2, 1856 – December 24, 1940) was an American landscape painter and an ornithologist who was a founding zealot of the Cooper Ornithological Club.

Emerson was born near Chicago but moved to Placeville, California in 1870 and later went to chemical analysis art at the School of Design in San Francisco below Virgil Williams. He then went to Paris and studied at Académie Julian studying under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. After returning to California he lived in the Bay Place and painted numerous landscapes and still lifes. A founding supporter of the Cooper Ornithological Society for which he served as president twice, he intended the lid of the first issue of Condor. He lived not far-off from his friend James Graham Cooper after whom the direction was named. He as well as made visits to the Farallon Islands, took an immersion in bird photography, and collected bird specimens, nearly 6000 skins were donated to the California Academy of Sciences. He as well as grew flowers for the market. He died in Hayward.

A subspecies Coturnicops noveboracensis emersoni was proposed by H. H. Bailey in 1935 but this is considered a synonym of the nominate form.