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I was struck by the story of W. A. Walker, American, living in that time when all the so called "real" art was being created in Europe. This story of an American making do with the gifts that he had seems to be in contrast to the well studied artists of Paris. Sometimes it's just about the story. The fact that he was a Southern Irishman "posing" might have something to do with my affection for his tale.
Shown below are:
Goin' Home I 12x6
Goin' Home II 19x13
William Aiken Walker
1838-1921
William Aiken Walker was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1839 to an Irish Protestant father and a mother of South Carolina background. Walker would grow up southerner through and through. He completed his first painting at age twelve and continued painting until his death in 1921 at age eighty-three.
When his father died in 1842, Walker's mother took her family to Baltimore, where they remained until returning to Charleston in 1848. During this period, he began painting rural farm and plantation scenes of poor southern blacks and it was these works that he built his reputation. Something of a prodigy as an artist, Walker exhibited his first painting in 1850, and received his first one-man show at the South Carolina Institute Fair in 1850 and Courtenay
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Mike McCarty
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