William A. Coulter

William A. Coulter was an Irish-born marine painter who spent his career chronicling the ships and waters of the San Francisco Bay. Born in Glenariff, County Antrim, he went to sea as an apprentice at thirteen and spent seven years before the mast before settling in San Francisco in 1869. In the late 1870s he traveled to Europe to study with marine painters Vilhelm Melbye, François Musin, and J. C. Jacobsen, sharpening the eye for rigging, weather, and light that defined his mature work.