Early Life
Garth Williams was born in New York City in 1912 to English artists, his father a cartoonist for Punch, his mother a landscape painter. "Everybody in my home was always either painting or drawing." He grew up on farms in New Jersey and Canada. In 1922 he and his family moved to the United Kingdom. He studied architecture and worked for a time as an architect's assistant. But when the Great Depression came he made up his mind to be an artist instead of an architect. He began his studies at Westminster School of Art in 1929 and in 1931 was awarded a four-year scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where he created a sculpture that was awarded the Prix de Rome. He continued his education in Germany and Italy until the outbreak of war in Europe. In London he volunteered with the British Red Cross Civilian Defense ambulances, and helped collect the dead and injured from the streets. After a bomb blast vaporized a friend who had been walking next to him, he sent his wife and daughter to Canada, and united with them in New York in 1942.
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