William Anderson was a professor of anatomy at the Imperial Naval Medical College in Tokyo, and became curator of Japanese art at the British Museum in 1881.
A paper he delivered at the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1879 is said to have inspired Ernest Fenollosa in his attitudes about Japanese art. Anderson is also known to have commissioned some eighty paintings from Kawanabe Kyôsai, and may have provided Kyôsai with Western pigments.
In 1881, the British Museum obtained Anderson's collection of Japanese art, and named him curator.
