Henry Oliver Walker

American (1843-1929)

Henry Oliver Walker, a Boston-born artist, was a portrait and mural painter. Walker traveled to Paris in 1879 to study with Leon Bonnat. In Paris, he met artists with whom he would later spend much time in Cornish, New Hampshire: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Thomas Dewing, Charles Platt, Dennis Bunker and Willard Metcalf. During that time, Walker, accompanied by painter H. Siddons Mowbray, toured Spain where they copied Old Master paintings. In 1880, he exhibited a painting, Le Philtre, at the Paris Salon.

In 1882 Walker returned to New York, where he established a studio and painted murals and portraits. His murals can be found in many public buildings across the United States, including the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts State House and Bowdoin College. In 1888 he married textile designer Laura Marquand, and the couple spent several summers at the artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. After several years in New York, Walker settled in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Walker became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1902. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.