William Dering (d. by 14 February 1751), portraitist and dancing master, is an elusive figure about whom nothing is known before 10 April 1735, when he published an advertisement in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Gazette announcing that he had divided the classes at his dancing school according to the skill levels of his pupils. The following February he announced that he also taught reading and writing and that students could receive instruction in French and needlework as well. His wife, Sarah Dering, whose maiden name is not known, may have assisted in teaching at the school. There is no surviving record of the date of their marriage, but they had an infant daughter who was baptized in Philadelphia on 1 August 1735.

By late in 1737 Dering had moved to Virginia, where two references to him in York County Court records identify him as William Dering, otherwise known as I. William Dering. He advertised in the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette on 25 November 1737 that he had opened a school at the College of William and Mary to teach gentlemen's sons dancing "according to the newest French Manner." Dering resided for a brief time in Gloucester County but had returned to Williamsburg probably by the summer of 1740. Between July of that year and August 1741 he occasionally visited the Byrd family at Westover, their Charles City County plantation, where he may have taught dancing to the children of William Byrd (1674–1744) and where at least once he played the French horn. Dering organized assemblies and entertainments on alternate nights at the Capitol during the sessions of the General Court in 1745, 1746, and 1747, and on 1 May in the last year the governor's Council ordered that he be paid an extra £20 for an entertainment.

Dering's residence in Virginia overlapped the stay of Charles Bridges, a successful portrait painter who worked in Williamsburg and the surrounding region from the mid-1730s until he returned to England about 1744. Dering probably met Bridges and may have acquired paintings, prints, and equipment from him. A list of Dering's property made in July 1744 noted that he owned seventeen pictures framed in gilt or black frames and ten unframed pictures. An enumeration taken in May 1745 following Bridges's departure indicated that Dering then owned a large hair trunk, about 200 prints, a paint box, and forty-four framed pictures.

When Dering began painting portraits is uncertain. John Mercer, of Stafford County, recorded in his ledger that Dering had painted his portrait in exchange for paints while he stayed with Dering during General Court sessions late in the 1740s. Dering's only known signed portrait is of Elizabeth Buckner Stith, of Brunswick County, painted about 1748 or 1749. The portrait demonstrates that Dering had received little or no formal training, but it and several other paintings that are attributed to him on stylistic grounds demonstrate his ability to produce lively and colorful, albeit unsophisticated, portraits.

Dering's most ambitious work is a charming full-length portrait of George Booth, a young gentleman of Gloucester County, standing at a garden entrance decorated with sculptures of well-endowed women. Booth holds a bow and arrow, and his spaniel grips in its teeth a bird killed by an arrow. Booth stands in a posture that defines his social position. Training in the highly mannered etiquette of dance helped members of the eighteenth-century Virginia gentry develop the necessary elegance and poise. As a dancing master, Dering was well-versed in the importance of deportment to men and women of, or aspiring to, high social status, an attribute evident in his portrait of Booth.

In August 1742 Dering purchased two lots on Williamsburg's Palace Green, on the later site of the Brush-Everard House. He did not earn enough money by teaching and painting to keep out of debt, and several people filed suit against him during the first half of that decade. In 1744 Dering mortgaged the lots, his enslaved workers, and his personal property, and the next year he mortgaged the property again. Dering mortgaged his Williamsburg property a third time on 29 September 1749 and then moved to South Carolina, where on 11 December he advertised in the Charleston South Carolina Gazette that he planned to teach dancing. By the following November he had entered into a partnership with Nicholas Scanlan, with whom he advertised a ball for 18 December 1750. It is not known whether Dering painted while in Charleston, where he may have died late in 1750 or early in 1751. On 14 February 1751 one of his Williamsburg creditors attended "Mrs Derings outcry," the public auction of the property that she had inherited on the death of William Dering.

Sources Consulted:
J. Hall Pleasants, "William Dering: A Mid-Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Portrait Painter," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1952): 56–63; Carolyn J. Weekley, "Further Notes on William Dering, Colonial Virginia Portrait Painter," Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 1 (1975): 21–28; Graham Hood, Charles Bridges and William Dering: Two Virginia Painters, 1735–1750 (1978), 99–122; Richard H. Saunders and Ellen G. Miles, American Colonial Portraits, 1700–1776 (1987), 11–12, 107, 164; Philadelphia Pennsylvania Gazette, 3/10 Apr. 1735, 11/19 Feb. 1736; Williamsburg Virginia Gazette, 18/25 Nov. 1737 (first quotation), 21/28 Mar., 3/10 Oct. 1745, 4/11 Sept. 1746; Charleston South Carolina Gazette, 4/11 Dec. 1749, 5/12, 12/19 Nov. 1750; York Co. Deeds, 5:102–105, 136–139, 343–345; York Co. Wills and Inventories, 18:515, 516, 549, 567 ("otherwise call'd I Wm Dering of the County of Gloscester" on 17 Mar. 1740), 568, 613, 19:75, 80, 125, 302, 358, 370 ("Wm Dering Otherwise called I Wm. Dering of the City of Wm.sburgh Gent" on 17 June 1745); numerous references in Maude H. Woodfin, ed., and Marion Tinling, translator, Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1739–1741 (1942); William and Mary Quarterly, 1st ser., 7 (1899): 136 (second quotation).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Barbara C. Batson.

How to cite this page:
Barbara C. Batson, "William Dering (d. 1751)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dering_William, accessed [today's date]).

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