| Facts/Data
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Birth
1818 (Northamptonshire, England)
Death
1889 (Watsonville, California)
Lived/Active
California
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Often Known For
historical battle, portrait, animal
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Categories of Interest
Civil War Art
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  James Walker, a painter of military battles and illustrator, was born in Northamptonshire, England on June 3, 1818. In 1823, Walker immigrated with his family to the United States and settled on the Hudson River at Albany, New York. A painting for which he remains known is a large panorama, completed 1870, of the Battle of Gettysburg. Showing the clash of Union and Confederate forces on the climactic third day, the work was first shown in Boston in March of 1870. A reviewer wrote that it was "at once a fine work of art and a wonderful illustration of the battle's history, the position of every regiment and battery being defined on a battle-field several miles in extent." (Charleston-Renaissance Gallery).
Little is known of Walker's art training. It is thought that he is to have studied painting in New York City. Upon leaving home in his early twenties, he went first to New Orleans and then to Mexico where he became interested in the Spanish-American culture. In 1846, war broke out between the United States and Mexico. He was imprisoned during the American siege in 1847 until escaping to the United States. He became an interpreter for General Winfield Scott in the U.S. Army and began sketching battle scenes. He became highly respected for later providing the Capitol in Washington with the large painting of the "Battle of Chapultepec", which still hangs there.
After the war, he established studios in New York and Washington, D.C., where he became well known as a painter of famous American battle scenes. He completed a number of government-commissioned works, one of which was placed in the Senate. In the late 1860s, or early 1870s, he settled into a studio in San Francisco. There he concentrated on genre scenes of the Mexican culture of early California. His highly detailed paintings realistically and accurately depict the costumes and gear of the rancheros and vaqueros on the cattle ranches.
Walker's works can be seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the U.S. Department of Defense Building, and in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
James Walker died at the home of this twin brother in Watsonville, California on August 29, 1889.
Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Charleston Renaissance Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina
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