Description:

William Aiken Walker (American/South Carolina, 1838-1921), "House along the Gulf Coast", 1870, oil on paper, signed and dated "Oct. 28(?), 1870" lower left, "Sotheby's..., New York, Dec. 18, 1991, lot 63" labels en verso, 6 3/4 in. x 9 1/2 in., framed with artist plaque. Provenance: Private Collection, Savannah, GA Note: To be included in John Fowler's forthcoming catalogue raisonne on William Aiken Walker. Note: Walker kept only one journal or day-book throughout his long career, during the period of his two-month sojourn in Cuba beginning on December 15, 1869. Following his last entry there, of February 13,1870, he sailed shortly afterward for Charleston and New York; he also possibly made his only visit to Europe, presumably that spring. At the end of the year, an undated clipping from the Baltimore Sun recorded his European trip, and also that Walker “contributed two original pictures” to “the Exhibition.” Since a parallel clipping of December 1871 refers to another such show as the “second annual” exhibition of Baltimore artists, the presumption is that the earlier clipping may have been published in December 1870. An example of the two “small paintings” that Walker presented in that show is named by the newspaper as “One of the Attractions of the Sea Shore” (it represented a girl on a rock, gazing out to sea). Apart from these anchors of January-February and December, Walker’s life and works are undocumented for the entire remainder of 1870. Thus the fine and unique painting offered here affords both an important new date in Walker scholarship, and also the quite unexpected revelation that he was in fact enjoying the Gulf Coast on its inscribed date of October 28, 1870. Ref.: Trovaioli, August P. and Roulhac B. Toledano. William Aiken Walker, Southern Genre Painter. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Seibels, Cynthia and Robert M. Hicklin Jr. The Sunny South: Life and Art of William Aiken Walker. Spartanburg: University of South Carolina Press,1995; Bellande, Ray L. Hotels and Tourist Homes of Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Ocean Springs, MS: Ray Bellande,1994, pp. 31-35, 67.

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