William Page, an American painter, born in Albany, N. Y., Jan. 23, 1811. He went to the city of New York with his parents in 1819, and at the age of 11 received a premium from the American institute for a drawing in India ink. At the age of 14 he was put into the law office of Frederick De Peyster; but his passion for art was so strong that he soon left it and engaged himself as an apprentice to Herring, a portrait painter, with whom he remained nearly a year. He afterward became a pupil of S. F. B. Morse, was admitted as a student at the national academy, and received a large silver medal for his drawings from the antique. At the age of 17 he became a member of a Presbyterian church, and went to Andover, Mass., and afterward to Amherst, to study theology; but at the end of two years his religious ardor cooled, and he returned to his artistic pursuits. After spending a year in Albany painting portraits, and exciting great expectations by the brilliancy of his color and the accuracy of his drawing, he went to New York, and was admitted a member of the national academy.

He painted the portrait of Gov. Marcy for the New York city hall, and that of John Quincy Adams for Fa-neuil hall in Boston. Besides portraits, he executed several historical compositions, among which were a "Holy Family," now in the Boston Athenaeum, "The Wife's Last Visit to her Condemned Husband," and "The Infancy of Henri IV." About 1844 he went to Boston to reside, and painted there a large number of portraits. In 1847 he returned to New York, where he remained two years, and then went to Europe, residing 11 years in Florence and Rome, and returning to New York in the autumn of 18G0. For four or five years subsequently he resided at Eagleswood, near Perth Amboy, N. J., and then built a house at the southern end of Staten island for his family, while he passes most of his time at his studio in New York. During his residence in Italy he painted the portraits of many distinguished Englishmen and Americans, and produced his two Venuses, his "Moses and Aaron on Mount Horeb," the "Flight into Egypt," the " Infant Bacchus," and other works. His copies of Titian, whose method of painting he professes to have discovered, were so remarkably like the originals, that one of them was stopped by the authorities at Florence under the belief that it was the original painting.

Since his return to America he has delivered several courses of lectures on art, and has published a " New Method of Measuring the Human Body," based upon the models of the antique. In May, 1871, he was elected president of the academy of design, which office he held for two years. For several years ho has been occupied with producing a bust of Shakespeare from photographs of a supposed mask of the poet taken after his death and now preserved in Germany. In 1874 he made a visit to Germany to study this mask. From the bust he has painted several portraits of Shakespeare. Among other portraits, he has painted those of Henry Ward Beecher, Charles A. Dana, Parke Godwin, Wendell Phillips, and Admiral Farragut. The last, a full-length representing Farragut at the battle of Mobile, was purchased by a committee in 1871 and presented to the emperor of Russia. A portrait of Christ painted and exhibited in 1870 attracted great attention, and excited much controversy.