William Harry Ahrendt is a contemporary painter known for his historical figures-genre paintings. He first studied art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He became interested in landscape when his family moved to Arizona .to care for his grandmother. His art studies continued when he returned to Cleveland and attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. At that time, the Abstraction movement was underway, a style that Ahrendt found unappealing. He left the United States for eleven years to tour Europe, living primarily in Germany, where he attended the Munich Academy of Creative Arts. There he studied the painting techniques of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, techniques that he applies to his own work.

After returning to the United States, he worked as a commercial artist in California, before being appointed Chair of the Glendale Community College Art Department (Arizona). For many years he contributed many paintings and drawings to “Arizona Highways Magazine”; however, in 1979, Ahrendt retired to the Pine Mountains, where he and his wife had built a home and studio, to concentrate on art. The original “Zoroaster Temple at Sunset, Thomas Moran, 1916“ painting is part of the Phoenix Art Museum collection.