A self taught artist, William Sonntag is best known for his paintings of the American landscape and his original approach to the use of color. From classical landscape composition, Sonntag adopted very specific elements and used them repeatedly. Landscape with Fishermen, a reflection of Sonntag’s pre 1870s style, is thickly painted and tightly drawn on a large canvas. Sonntag painted a dark greenish brown foreground, a middle ground of lighter greens and blues, and gray blue mountains slightly darker than the gray blue sky, a color design used to create a sense of distance. The mirror like quality of the lake, which reflects the daytime sky, lends a poetic quality to the scene.