William Wolfson, was born in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania on October 26, 1894 to Samuel and Lillian Wolfson (His father had changed his name from Smorgonski to Wolfson). He studied at Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and at both the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League (here with Robert Henri), as well as with Arthur Watson Sparks, George Willoughby Maynard, and Frank Vincent DuMond in New York City.

Wolfson’s work is most often associated with the Social Realist movement of the Depression. Wolfson taught at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), and later, after moving to California around 1936, at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California. He exhibited his work with the American Institute of Graphic Arts traveling exhibition ‘Fifty Prints of the Year’, one each in 1927-28, 1928-29 and 1931-32. In 1933 he exhibited 2 lithographs at the Whitney Biennial. He also showed his etchings in the Brooklyn Society of Etchers exhibition in 1927 and with the Print Makers Society of California in 1926.

Wolfson produced a significant body of artwork for Reader's Digest during the 1940s, and his paintings and lithographs are held by numerous public and private institutions.

William Wolfson died in Los Angeles, California on December 6, 1966.