William Magrath was a Cork, Ireland-born figure painter and follower of Alma Tadema. He was educated at the Blue Coat School and the School of Art in Cork, after which he stowed away to New York where he was to eventually become an elected member of the Academy of Design in America. He returned to Ireland in the 1880s and made a sketching tour of West Cork and Kerry. Forever restless, he traveled through Europe. His watercolor Bacchantes was exhibited at the Crawford in 1893 and was said to portray "vivacious figures in the foreground ... admirably displayed against the bright blue of the Hellenic Sea" (Cork Examiner, 24 November 1893). Examples of his work are in the Crawford Gallery, Cork, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (See also Peter Murray, Illustrated Summary Catalog of the Crawford Municipal Gallery of Art, 1992, pp. 178-179 and Snoddy, pp. 405-407).