Painter, printmaker, and photgrapher William Horace Smith was born in Everett, Washington on March 7, 1892. Little is noted of his early art education or pursuits but it is known that he worked as a cartoonist in Seattle during World War I. By the 1920s he had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), University of San Francsico, and privately with Davis F. Schwartz. He married painter Ruth Marie McNeil (1903 - 1994) in 1930.

Best known for his regionalist imagery in watercolors and oils, he was also a photographer. Among his subjects was Albert Einstein, whose outdoor portrait, "Albert Einstein Standing Alone in Palm Springs Desert (1930)" is in the Library of Congress (no. IH179033). He was a member of the Society of Western Artists and the American Artists Professional League. 

Selected exhibitions:
1918: Seattle Public Library (cartoons)
1945: Society for Sanity in Art, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2nd prize)
1960: St. Mary's College, Moraga, CA (with Ruth)