CHAPTER VIII
FREDERICK WALKER
I think it was a criticism of Sidney Colvin’s in the Pall Mall Gazette upon his picture called “The Plough” that first drew me to a closer study of Fred Walker’s work. Sidney Colvin had preceded me as Art Critic of the Pall Mall, and I am very conscious that in my first efforts in art criticism I closely modelled myself upon his style.
He and Bernal Payne had already done much to direct public attention to the new movement in Art before I entered the field. And it was not wonderful, in view of Colvin’s eloquent advocacy of the men whom I most deeply admired, that I should have been drawn to the art of Fred Walker, whose talent he had particularly distinguished.
A little later I got to know Walker himself, but he was difficult to know well, not by reason of any deliberate reserve, but because of an unconquerable shyness which was deeply rooted in his character. Shy in his ordinary converse as a man, he was no less so in regard to his pictures. As one entered his studio he would always turn the work upon which he was engaged with its face to the wall, and
A WOMAN IN THE SNOW
From Good Words.
By Fredrick Walker, A.R.A., R.W.S.
Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.
(Reproduced from their Fifty Years’ Work.)
To face page 103.