Horatio Walker

Horatio Walker was born in Listowel, Ontario and died in St. Petronille, Quebec. His early art training was as an apprentice at the Toronto photography firm of Notman and Fraser under artists John A. Fraser and Robert Ford Gagen. Later he traveled in Europe where he was strongly influenced by the French Barbizon School of painting. In 1882, the young artist moved to the United States, first to Rochester and then to New York City. He spent each summer in Quebec on the Ile d'Orleans. His paintings were widely exhibited earning Walker membership in the American Watercolour Society, the (American) National Academy of Design, the Royal Canadian Academy, and selection in several important international fairs where he won many influential honours and prizes. He adopted the style of the Barbizon School to work in oil and watercolour using floral, genre, landscape and some portrait subjects.//Walker is an extremely significant artist who gained an international reputation by the end of the 19th century by bringing an international approach to Canadian subject matter.