William Gaskin

Albert Erling Dahn

A portrait of the artist and art administrator William Gaskin (1892 - 1968), by Albert Erling Dahn. Both artists taught together at the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Art. Gaskin died the year before this print was made, which might mean that this was a memorial image to Dahn's friend and colleague.

William Gaskin was born in San Francisco in 1892, and he took courses at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute (later the San Francisco Art Institute) around 1913, studying under William Chase, Armin Hansen, and E. Charlton Fortune and participating in the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. With the onset of World War I he enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving in Lyon, France, where he was exposed to European modernism in both visual and performaing arts. After returning to California he worked briefly as a graphic designer before turning to theater set design, first in Carmel, and then New York.

During the Depression, Gaskin returned to California and formed as small co-op for sculptors and painters. When the Works Progress Administration began, he worked for its California Art Project in the San Francisco Bay Area and was appointed supervisor for the Bay Region, which stretched from San Francisco County to Monterey County. Among his colleagues and associates were the Bruton Sisters, Glenn Wessels, Dong Kingman, Diego Rivera, Ray Bertrand, Edward Hagedorn, Maya Albee, and many others. He would continue to live and work in the Bay Area until his death in 1968.