William Bailey (1930-2020) was a contemporary realist painter and Professor Emeritus in Fine Art at Yale University. He is best known for his quiet, naturalistic still life. Bailey’s paintings have an enigmatic quality as well – the interior spaces are simple and even stage-like (Mark Strand, William Bailey (New York: Abrams, 1987), 8), and the contents of the containers are never visible to the viewer. The almost otherworldly quality of Bailey’s still lifes comes from his method of composing the paintings based on imagination rather than a real-life arrangement of objects. The blue and white salt shaker and mug in Panicale (1988) also appear in Manhattan Still Life (1980). Bailey began his artistic training at Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers. The flat, precise, tonal expanses of colour in Bailey’s work evokes Albers’ geometric colour field paintings. Later, Bailey divided his time between New Haven, Connecticut and Perugia, Italy. His still lifes also show the influence of the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. Bailey's works are held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Art Institute of Chicago; Stadtisches Surmondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; among other public and private collections. Bailey is the subject of two monographs, one by Mark Strand and the other by John Hollander and Guiliano Briganti, and exhibited at prominent galleries including André Emmerich in New York City. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship and was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Public Collections

Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
de Young Museum, San Francisco
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing
Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington
Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, Evansville
Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Hyde Collection, Glens Falls
Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Indianapolis
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo
Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Mead Art Museum, Amherst
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Nasher Museum of Art, Durham
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit
Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Rose Art Museum, Waltham
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Speed Art Museum, Louisville
Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute
Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen
University Museum of Contemporary Art, Amherst
University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City
University of Kentucky, Lexington
University of Louisville, Louisville
University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque
University of Tulsa, Tulsa
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita
William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven