Born in Terrington, Yorkshire, William Bustard studied at Yorkshire’s Scarborough School of Art, Surrey’s Battersea Polytechnic, and the Putney School of Art in London. In 1913, he joined James Powell and Sons (‘Whitefriars Glass’) as a stained-glass draughtsman and worked on windows for cathedrals in Great Britain and North America before serving in the Medical Corps during World War One.

After migrating to Australia in 1921, Bustard settled in Brisbane. As chief designer for RS Exton and Co., he devised stained-glass windows for St John’s Cathedral, St Augustine’s and other churches, both in Queensland and interstate.

Like his colleague Charles H Lancaster, Bustard exhibited with the Royal Queensland Art Society. In 1937, Summer haze featured in the Society’s 49th Annual Exhibition along with Lancaster’s A corner of Brisbane 1937. Bustard’s painting depicts the view from St Andrew’s Church on Vulture Street, South Brisbane, capturing the city in the distance, bathed in heat and humidity.