William Sartain apprenticed to his brother as an engraver, but decided he wanted to be a painter and traveled to Paris to study. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870s forced him to leave France, and he spent eighteen months traveling around Europe studying “tens of thousands of pictures.” Back in America, Sartain established a studio in New York, traveling to Philadelphia every two weeks to teach a drawing and painting class. This informal class, taught outside the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, inspired many young artists who would later become famous.