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Dame Ethel Walker (1861-1951)
c.1925
Oil on canvas, 613 x 508mm (2418 x 20")
National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 5301)
Dame Ethel Walker was born in
Edinburgh. She attended Putney School of Art, Westminster School
of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art during different periods
between 1883 and 1922. Velázquez (1599-1660), the
Impressionists and Walter Sickert (1872-98), whose evening
classes she attended, were her main influences. She exhibited
at the Royal Academy from 1898 onwards and joined the New English
Art Club in 1900. Her first one-person show was at the Redfern
Gallery, Cork Street, London, in 1927. She had a studio by the
Thames in Chelsea (she was known as a 'Cheyne Walker' - one
of a group of women artists who had trained at the Slade, belonged
to the New English Art Club and lived in Cheyne Walk). She also
had a cottage in Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire, where she spent
time with her wire-haired fox terriers and painted seascapes
outdoors. She represented Britain in the Venice Biennale in 1930
and 1932, and her painting Nausicaa (now in the Tate's collection)
represented British art at the 1939 World Trade Fair in Chicago.
This portrait has real presence and a feeling of spontaneity,
echoing the work of the French painter and printmaker Berthe
Morisot (1841-95) in its impasto and textured brushwork.
There is a slightly raffish quality to the masculine tie worn
askew, whilst the decorative collar of her yellow jacket is visually
arresting. Walker's portraits, still lifes and landscape paintings
show a sensibility which is more convincing than in her larger
visionary compositions. Walker was said to have been an eccentric
character with a terse wit, confidence in her own abilities and
a 'furious energy'.
Elected honorary president of the Women's International Art Club
in 1932, she was made an Associate Member of the Royal Academy
in 1940 and a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1943. The
Tate held a retrospective exhibition of her work (together with
that of Gwen John and Frances Hodgkins) in 1951. Her work is
held in numerous public collections including the Royal Collection,
the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Musée d'Art Moderne
de la Ville de Paris, and at York City Art Gallery and Leeds
City Art Gallery.
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