WALTON, Edward Arthur

Scottish painter. He trained at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (1876-77) and Glasgow School of Art. One of the Glasgow Boys (a group of Scottish painters who was interpreting and expanding the canon of Impressionist and Post-impressionist painting), he painted outdoors in the Trossachs and at Crowland, Lincs, with James Guthrie, Joseph Crawhall and George Henry. He also painted in William York Macgregor’s life studio in Glasgow. He joined the New English Art Club in 1887 and developed an atmospheric landscape style influenced by plein-air painting and by James McNeill Whistler with whom he was friendly during his stay in London (1894-1904); Autumn Sunshine (1884; University of Glasgow, Hunterian Art Gallery) is characteristic.

Walton was a regular exhibitor from 1880 in both Glasgow, at the Institute of the Fine Arts, and Edinburgh, at the Royal Scottish Academy. He was elected an Associate of the Academy in 1889 and a full member in 1905, taking an active role in its affairs after moving to Edinburgh in 1904. He concentrated after c. 1885 on pastel and on watercolour, which he used notably in his Helensburgh and Kensington scenes of contemporary life.

From 1915 he served as President of the Royal Scottish Water Colour Society. Oil was reserved largely for portraits in a Whistlerian style, such as the Artist’s Mother (1885; Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland). Such portraits became his chief source of income. During the late 1880s and 1890s he painted murals for the main building of the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888 and various other buildings in the city. His only surviving decoration is Glasgow Fair in the Fifteenth Century (1899-1901; Glasgow, City Chambers).