William James Stillman (June 1, 1828July 6, 1901) was an American journalist, diplomat, author, historian, and photographer. Educated as an artist, Stillman subsequently converted to the profession of journalism, working primarily as a war correspondent in Crete and the Balkans, where he served as his own photographer. For a time, he also served as United States consul in Rome, and afterward in Crete during the Cretan insurrections. He helped to train the young Arthur Evans as a war correspondent in the Balkans, and remained a lifelong friend and confidant of Evans. Later in life, he seriously considered taking over the excavation at Knossos from Minos Kalokairinos, who had been stopped from further excavation by the Cretan Assembly; he was, however, prevented from pursuing that goal further by a failure to obtain a firman, or permission, to excavate. Stillman wrote several books, one of which, his Autobiography of a Journalist, suggests that he viewed himself primarily as a writer.
Biography
Stillman was born in Schenectady, New York, in 1828. His parents were Seventh Day Baptists, and his early religious training influenced him throughout his life. He was sent to school in New York by his mother, who made great sacrifices so that he might get an education, and he graduated from Union College of Schenectady in 1848. Deciding at that time to pursue a career in art, he was one of the first students of the eminent Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church, then fresh from his own studies with Thomas Cole and setting out on a career that would see him become the most famous (and financially successful) artist in America. Stillman had a contentious relationship with Church but picked up skills in the art of oil on canvas that would serve him well in the small but accomplished group of paintings by his hand that have survived, including, most famously, The Philosophers' Camp (Concord, MA Public Library). In 1850, Stillman traveled to England, where he made the acquaintance of John Ruskin, whose Modern Painters he had devoured; was introduced to J. M. W. Turner, for whose works he had unbounded admiration; and fell so profoundly under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais that on his return home in the same year he became known as the "American Pre-Raphaelite."