"Bootham Bar and York Minster,"
etching, pencil signed l/r, 11.5" x
15.5" plate, 20" x 23" frame.
Click image to enlarge.
Condition: Very good.
Biography: Henry George Walker was born in 1876 in
the Birchfield area of Birmingham,
where
his father was in the coal trade.
From 1897-1901
he attended the well-known Birmingham
Municipal
School of Art, now part of the
University
of Central England. He may have
designed
jewellery for a time after finishing
his
training there. By 1907 he was
working as
a freelance designer and commercial
line
artist from his own studio in
his Birchfield
home. The patriotic Bulldog in
a naval cap
probably represents one of his
commercial
commissions during the First
World War, though
it was used again at the beginning
of the
Second, several years after his
death.
He became active as an etcher
from around
1921, when he first exhibited
at the Royal
Birmingham Society. To make a
living, he
concentrated on popular architectural
and
topographical plates in various
combinations
of soft-ground etching, dry-point,
and aquatint,
both coloured and monochrome.
The etchings
are titled and signed in pencil
Henry G.Walker,
with H.G.W. or H.G.Walker on
the plate itself,
though he was known to friends
and family
as 'Harry'.
He produced over 150 designs,
more than half
of them of places in the South
West, with
varying degrees of market response....
He
was particularly successful with
studies
of harbours like Tenby and Brixham
with their
trawlers.
As the 'etching boom' of the
1920s began
to recede with the onset of the
Depression,
he seems to have started to experiment
with
ink-and-wash designs for reproduction
as
coloured prints. They were chiefly
of cats
and dogs in humorous situations,
somewhat
in the manner of his slightly
older contemporary
Cecil Aldin.
Walker's His Last Battle is reminiscent of Aldin's engaging watercolour
An ill of a mysterious character, which has a Bulldog puppy in bed contemplating
a bottle of medicine. But in
Aldin's piece
the bed is a real dog's bed on
the floor,
and the bottle is the only humanising
touch.
Walker also provides long dialogue
captions,
such as the one to another design
of a heavily-bandaged
terrier sitting on its haunches.
He moved down to Babbacombe in Devon in 1929,
and set up his studio in a new house. But
the venture was cut short by his early death
in 1932. He was buried in Barton Cemetery
Torquay, next to the grave of the Victorian
sculptor Sir Bertram Mackennal. - from Dogs Monthly.
$245.00
inclusive of S/H/I*
For other payment options, or for further
information, please e-mail.
*Additional shipping/insurance charges apply
to shipments outside the continental
United
States.
Thistle Fine Art · P. O. Box 714 · 8A Main Street · Rockport, MA 01966
978-546-2020 · blowe@thistlefineart.com
