Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (later Czechoslovakia), painter William Pachner (1915-   ) followed a path trod by many other European émigré artists of the period, traveling to the United States in 1939 and eventually settling in the eastern part of the country. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he eschewed the energy and hustle of New York City, preferring bucolic Woodstock, New York, which afforded him the tranquility he felt he needed for his work. Although Woodstock would become his permanent home, he also nurtured long-standing ties with Florida’s Gulf Coast. He maintained a winter residence in Clearwater Beach from 1951 to 1969, taught at the Tampa Art Institute from 1957 to 1969, and, although his annual visits were only brief between 1970 and 1980, near the end of that decade he built a studio in Tampa.