William Louis Sonntag was a landscape painter associated with Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1823 Sonntag’s family moved to Cincinnati, where he grew up. Apparently self-taught, he opened a studio around 1846. Among his early works were ideal subjects, but he soon established a specialty as a landscape painter, drawing his themes from sketching trips in the nearby mountainous areas. He married in 1851, and his son William Louis Sonntag, Jr. (1869-1898) also became a landscape painter. The elder Sonntag traveled to Europe in 1853, probably with ROBERT S. DUNCANSON, and again in 1855, spending a year in Florence. After his return he settled in New York, although he continued to visit Cincinnati and may have again visited Italy sometime during the 1860s. He was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1860 and an academician in 1861. He was active as a watercolorist during the 1880s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
"William Louis Sonntag" Cosmopolitan Art Journal 3 (December 1858): 26-28 § Boston, Vose Galleries, William L. Sonntag, 1822-1899, William L. Sonntag, Jr., 1869-1898, exh. cat., 1970, essay by William Sonntag Miles § New York, Chapellier Galleries, William L. Sonntag [sic], N.A., March 2,1822--January 22, 1900, exh. cat., 1970 § Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, William Louis Sonntag: Artist of the Ideal, 1822-1900 (Los Angeles: Goldfield Galleries, 1980), with catalogue raisonné, chronology § New York, Irvin Brenner, Maxwell Circle Galleries, William L. Sonntag, exh. cat., 1982.