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Martha Walter
1875–1976
BirthplacePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Death placeGlenside, Pennsylvania, United States of America
BiographyUsing loose, dynamic brushstrokes and expressive color, Martha Walter painted people-filled scenes of the world around her, studies of individual figures, and floral still lifes, in oils and watercolors. After graduating from high school, Walter attended the venerable Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in her native Philadelphia, beginning in 1894. A student of influential painter William Merritt Chase, who became her lifelong patron, Walter was strongly influenced by his bravura brushwork and subjects drawn from contemporary experience. In 1902 Walter won a Cresson Traveling Scholarship at the Academy that enabled her to travel to Paris the following year to further her training. She studied at the Académie Julian and the Grande Chaumière, the two most popular private schools in the French capital. Walter shared a studio with several other women, and traveled with Columbus, Ohio artist Alice Schille (1869–1955) to paint in Italy, Holland, and Belgium. She also began to paint scenes of Parisian streets and café interiors, possibly stimulated by her meeting with expatriate American painter Alfred Maurer (1868–1932), who was portraying such settings before his turn toward modernism in 1907.
Before World War I, Walter traveled widely in Europe from her base in Paris. Thereafter, she worked from studios in New York City and Gloucester, Massachusetts, a small fishing port popular with tourists and artists alike. She also made frequent trips to Europe and, in 1924, to North Africa. She painted colorful beach and garden scenes en plein air, or outdoors before her subject, and in the studio she created portraits, posed figural works (especially of children), and floral still lifes. In 1922 she completed an important series of thirty-six paintings depicting newly arrived immigrants at the official entry port at Ellis Island. That year, the French government purchased one of her works for the Luxembourg Museum following her solo show at the Galleries Georges Petit in Paris. By that date Walter had established an international reputation. Consistently popular with American critics and the public, she was recognized with numerous other solo exhibitions and prizes in the course of her long career.
Walter taught at the New York School of Art (later the Parsons School of Design), founded in 1896 by her mentor Chase. She also conducted painting classes on the French coast in the province of Brittany, and in Paris and Chicago. Walter never married. By the time the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia mounted a 135-work retrospective of her art in 1955, she had returned to the vicinity of her native city, where she continued to paint until just a few years before her death two months before her 101st birthday.
Before World War I, Walter traveled widely in Europe from her base in Paris. Thereafter, she worked from studios in New York City and Gloucester, Massachusetts, a small fishing port popular with tourists and artists alike. She also made frequent trips to Europe and, in 1924, to North Africa. She painted colorful beach and garden scenes en plein air, or outdoors before her subject, and in the studio she created portraits, posed figural works (especially of children), and floral still lifes. In 1922 she completed an important series of thirty-six paintings depicting newly arrived immigrants at the official entry port at Ellis Island. That year, the French government purchased one of her works for the Luxembourg Museum following her solo show at the Galleries Georges Petit in Paris. By that date Walter had established an international reputation. Consistently popular with American critics and the public, she was recognized with numerous other solo exhibitions and prizes in the course of her long career.
Walter taught at the New York School of Art (later the Parsons School of Design), founded in 1896 by her mentor Chase. She also conducted painting classes on the French coast in the province of Brittany, and in Paris and Chicago. Walter never married. By the time the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia mounted a 135-work retrospective of her art in 1955, she had returned to the vicinity of her native city, where she continued to paint until just a few years before her death two months before her 101st birthday.