Born in Vevay, Indiana in 1881, Will Henry Stevens enrolled in the Cincinnati Art Academy at the age of sixteen and continued his studies at Rookwood Pottery and the Art Students League, New York City. At the age of twenty he presented a one-man show in New York City and then decided to return to Indiana. In 1920 he visited the Charles H. Freer Gallery in Washington, DC, and became interested in Oriental art and culture, particularly Chinese Taoist concepts of harmony and nature. These principles are found in varying degrees in most of his subsequent work. In 1921 he joined the art faculty at Sophie Newcomb College, New Orleans, Louisiana, where he taught until he retired in 1948. Stevens had a mountain retreat in North Carolina, where he explored and painted mountain scenes. An innovator throughout his life, he began painting non-objective works in the 1940s under the influence of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. Stevens exhibited his works in two galleries, one for his nature paintings and the other for his non-objective works. Stevens died in 1949.  

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