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08/19/2009
Fred R. Kline
frk@klinegallery.com
WILLIAM AIKEN WALKER’S EARLY TEXAS PERIOD, 1874-1876:
A FREQUENT BIOGRAPHICAL OMISSION
William Aiken Walker, while in his mid-30s, lived and painted in Texas for several years during the 1870s. He arrived in Galveston in 1874 and spent most of his time there. In 1876, he traveled to San Antonio and lived there for perhaps six months before leaving Texas altogether. From Walker’s two year period in Texas, less than ten paintings have been located and less than five have been published, the most notable being View of Galveston Harbor (Rosenberg Library, Galveston), San Jose Mission, San Antonio (Witte Museum-San Antonio Museum Foundation), and San Antonio Flower Girl (Private Collection, Santa Fe).
The San Antonio genre and architectural paintings of Theodore Gentilz (1819-1906), pioneer San Antonio artist and art teacher who was active and well known in the city from 1844 to 1894, very likely influenced Walker and it is plausible, based on Gentilz’s style and primary subject matter and the close affinities found in Walker’s San Antonio and later paintings, that Gentilz may also have given instruction to Walker. William Aiken Walker’s early Texas paintings, a small but significant body of work, offer rare and historically important examples of the 19th century period in Texas Art History, a period represented by relatively few published works.
Important Note: After his Texas-period, Walker became widely known in the Deep South for his genre paintings of African-American cotton field workers, a body of many hundreds of standardized works that has stimulated scores of fakes, questionable 20th c. works “in the manner of Walker” (see Maine Antique Digest, July 2000: “How Bogus Paintings Plagued the Art Market for Over a Decade: The William Aiken Walker Affair” by David Hewett). Numerous clever forgeries of the cotton field genre still range across the art markets and have often been mistakenly “authenticated” by Walker specialists. No Texas paintings by Walker have been found to be forgeries.
12/13/2000
Cynthia Seibels
"The Sunny South: The Life and Art of William Aiken Walker" has 273 pages and 103 illustrations, all of which are in full color.
07/06/2000
Cynthia Seibels
Please add my book to your "Books on this Artist."
Cynthia Seibels, The Sunny South: The Life and Art of William Aiken Walker (Spartanburg, SC: Saraland Press, 1995).
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