Horatio Walker 

1858-1938

 
Horatio Walker was born in Listowel, Ontario, and had his formal schooling at the Listowel Public School. On his twelfth birthday, Horatio Walker’s father took him along on a business trip in Quebec City and Île d’Orleans. Walker was very much impressed by the beauty of the area and planted the desire to live there in the future. After finishing his schooling in 1872, he moved to Toronto to apprentice at the photographic firm Notman and Fraser where he hand-coloured photographs. Working there was very beneficial for the development of Walker as an artist since several successful artists already worked there among whom were Lucius O’Brian and John Fraser. During his stay in Toronto, he studied under Farquhar McGillivray Knowles and also became a good friend of Homer Watson.
 
He worked at Notman and Fraser for three years after which he left Canada in 1876 and travelled to the United-States, stopping first in Philadelphia to attend the Centennial Exposition. He eventually stayed in the United-States and settled in Rochester, New-York, where he kept working as a photographer, while still making occasional visits to Canada. He became familiar with the painters of the École de Barbizon and other European artists, as they exhibited frequently in many American galleries and museums at this time. From May to November 1880, Walker took an extensive walking and sketching tour from L'Épiphanie, a small village west of Montreal, to Quebec City. Living with the local habitant farmers, he sketched their daily lives, embracing the subject matter for which he would become famous.
 
As his painting talent grew, he became further involved in the Art scene and founded the Rochester Art Club with other artists in 1880. He exhibited with the Art Club during the inaugural show, and did so in the years that followed except for the 1881 show, when he supposedly travelled across Europe in France, England, Ireland, Belgium and Spain. He was named President of the Rochester Art Club in 1884, a position that he kept until the next year when he moved to New York City.
 
Horatio Walker had already made many trips to New York City before moving there in 1885. It seems that he rented a studio there as early as 1880, but mainly stayed in Rochester due to his activities there. He was invited to exhibit his watercolours at the American Water Colour Society starting in 1881. He received critical acclaim and later became a member of the American Water Colour Society. The year of 1883 would also prove to be a turning point in his career as a painter. During that year, one of his paintings was hung at the National Academy of Design in New York. That summer, he came back to Canada and was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy. Throughout this trip he painted many works and went back to New York with a variety of magnificent rural subjects. In the same year, the prestigious Montross Gallery in New York became his dealer and from then on, his reputation and career thrived. Montross was a key-person for Walker’s art as he sold most of his works and also reproduced many of them in different publications, making Horatio Walker’s works known to a wider public. Thanks to Montross’s efforts, demand kept rising for Walker’s works and so did his prices: the National Gallery of Canada acquired a work in 1899 for ten thousand dollars, an enormous amount unheard of in Canada for a work by a North American artist. His association with the Montross Gallery continued until it closed in 1925.
 
Walker stayed in New York for about fifteen years during which time he spent his summers in the Quebec City area staying at a house he had bought in the mid 1880’s at Île d’Orléans, while returning to New York City in the winter time. During this period, he accumulated many honours and awards: he won the first ever William T. Evans Prize in 1882; he won a prize at the American Art Galleries in 1886; he won a Gold Medal at the American Art Association and was elected a member of the Society of American Artists in 1887; he won a bronze medal at the Paris World Fair of 1889; he was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1890 and made a full member the year after; he was awarded a gold medal and a diploma at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. That same year, a full-page reproduction of one of his paintings travelled the world when it was illustrated in The Century Magazine of London. All of these prizes secured his status as one of the most esteemed American artists of his time.

Strong of his success in America, Walker left New York in 1901 and headed for England, where he settled in London. Upon his arrival he exhibited at the Institute of Painters in Water Colour and attracted critical acclaim. This earned him membership in the British Institute of Water Colours. While in England, he also exhibited at the Royal Academy of London. During this period, his continuing success in the United States resulted in a flood of medals between 1900 and 1907: a gold medal at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition in 1901; a gold medal at the Charleston Exposition in 1902; a double gold medal for watercolour and oil at the St. Louis Purchase Exhibition in 1904; a medal of honour at the 1906 exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy; a first prize at the Worcester Art Museum exhibition in 1907. Walker accumulated memberships in over a dozen artist societies and many purchases were made by British and American collections, notably the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the Art Museum of St. Louis, the Albright Gallery in Buffalo and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. He left England and came back to Canada in 1906.

Even though Walker had exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy as early as 1901, his success on the Canadian scene wasn’t insured until he came back to Canada and took part in the Canadian Art Club in 1907. Edmund Morris was the driving force behind the Club as he wanted to provide a forum for expatriate Canadian Artists of Distinction. Other members of the original group included Homer Watson, Curtis Williamson, Joseph Archibald Brown, W.E. Atkinson, James Morrice and Franklin Brownell. Walker became the President of the club in 1915, but quarrelling broke out almost immediately and Walker resigned in 1916. The group collapsed soon after. Nonetheless, the Canadian Art Club held exhibitions annually from 1908 to 1915 helping expatriate Canadian artists to establish themselves in Canada.

In about 1913, his creative energy levelled off and his work was starting to be seen as repetitive. From that year, he stopped travelling abroad except for his winter stays in New York City. He kept up a strong exhibition presence in the United States but only received two more exhibition awards, a medal from the San Francisco Pan-American Exhibition in 1915 and the Hudnut Prize from the American Water Colour Society in 1920. Strangely enough, Walker accumulated honours in Canada starting in 1913, when he was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy. In 1915, the Art Gallery of Ontario held an exhibition of Walker’s work and the next year he received an honorary degree form the University of Toronto. He later received an honorary doctorate from Université Laval in Quebec.

Over the next two decades, walker kept painting, sketching and exhibiting works depicting rural French-Canadian life. In 1928, he announced his retirement and ceased travelling to New York. He settled definitively at his Ste. Petronille home on Île d’Orléans where, over the last twenty years of his life, many Canadian Artists came to paint with him including Clarence Gagnon, John Y. Johnstone, William Brymner, Edmond Dyonnet and Maurice Cullen. As if to celebrate his career, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montréal held retrospective shows of his work in 1929. He died in Ste. Petronille de l’Île d’Orléans at the age of 80.

Following his death, many works were shown in group exhibitions, and retrospective exhibitions were held in different Museums: at the National Gallery of Canada in 1941; at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1958; at the London Public Art Museum in 1959; at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 1977 and at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec in 1986. 
 


 
Collections:

- National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, QC)
- Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Quebec, QC)
- Musée d’Art de Joliette (Joliette, QC)
- Musée de la Civilisation (Quebec, QC)
- Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON)
- Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton, ON)
- Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Victoria, BC)
- Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax, NS)
- Edmonton Art Gallery (Edmonton, AB)
- Winnipeg Art Gallery (Winnipeg, MN)
- MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina, SK)
- Museum London (London, ON)
- Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, ON)
- Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB)
- The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON)
- Confederation center and Art Gallery (Charlottetown, PEI)
- Concordia University (Montreal, QC)
- Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Firestone Art Collection (Ottawa, ON)
- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, NY, USA)
- Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts (Springfield, MA, USA)
- National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, USA)
- Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE, USA)
- Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, MA, USA)
- Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC, USA)
- The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie (Canajoharie, NY, USA)
- The Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, OH, USA)
- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO, USA)
- The Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, OH, USA)
- Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD, USA)
 
 
 
Affiliations:
 
- Rochester Art Club (1880) (President, 1884-1885)
- American Water Colour Society
- Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy (1883)
- Society of American Artists (1887)
- National Academy of Design (1890)
- British Institue of Water Colours (1901)
- Canadian Art Club (1907) (President, 1915-1916)
- Royal Canadian Academy (1913)