William Thomas Kinkade III was an American painter of popular realistic, pastoral, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products via the Thomas Kinkade Company. He described himself as "Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light", a phrase he protected through trademark but which was originally used to describe the English artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). According to Kinkade's company, one in every twenty American homes owns a copy of one of his paintings.
