Walter Withers
Walter Herbert Withers (born October 22, 1854 in Aston Manor , England ; † October 13, 1914 in Eltham , Australia ) was an Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School , the Australian Impressionists .
Live and act
Withers was born in Warwickshire , what is now Birmingham, as one of fourteen children. He showed an early desire to paint, but his father Edwin Withers was reluctant. It is unknown what occupation he had in England. However, his father didn't want him to become a professional painter.
In 1882 he arrived in Australia with the intention of working on a farm. After working on a farm for about 18 months, Withers went to Melbourne and got a job as a draftsman in a printing company. There he made black and white portraits with chalk for various magazines. In his spare time, Withers strove to cultivate his art. Eventually one of his works was accepted for an exhibition at the Old Academy, Melbourne. During this time he met Frederick McCubbin , Tom Roberts and Louis Abrahams , with whom he remained lifelong friends.
Withers went to Europe in 1887. On October 11, 1887, he married Fanny Flinn in Handsworth-with-Soho, Staffordshire . The couple settled in a small apartment in Paris . For a few months he studied at the Académie Julian .
Having been commissioned to do black and white work for Fergusson & Mitchell from Melbourne, he and his wife returned to Australia in June 1888 . His best known work of this type can be found in the illustrations for Edmund Finn's The Chronicles of Early Melbourne .
Withers first settled in Kew , a suburb of Melbourne, then in Eaglemont on the other side of the Yarra River . He started selling a few paintings, but the Depression of the 1890s put an end to his illustrative work.
influence
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Wither's influence as a painter on younger students of his day was considerable. He took up some positions as a teacher for drawing and painting in schools. Among his students were Percy Lindsay and his younger brother Norman Lindsay .
In 1891 he opened a studio in Melbourne, where he also held his first private exhibition. From 1894, Withers spent four years in a country house in Cape Street, Heidelberg . It was there that some of his best work, that of fin de siècle, was created . In 1894 his masterpiece, Tranquil Winter , was shown in an exhibition by the Victorian Artists' Society and was purchased by the curators of the National Gallery of Victoria . The Selector's Home (1895), was a hit that drew the admiration of Arthur Streeton and Fred McCubbin .
Withers settled down after a steady career as a painter, although not commercially successful from the start. In 1897 he received the first Wynne Prize in Sydney for his work The Storm , which the Art Gallery of New South Wales bought in the same year . In 1889 he was elected to the council of the Victorian Artists' Society, and in 1905 he held the presidency for one year. Towards the end of his life his health deteriorated, but he still completed a number of works, both oil and watercolors .
He died in Eltham, Victoria , in 1914, leaving behind his wife and four children.
Individual evidence
swell
- Percival Serle: Withers, Walter Herbert . In: Dictionary of Australian Biography . Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1949 (Link = [1] [accessed March 23, 2013]).
Web links
- Withers, Walter Herbert (1854-1914) on the pages of the Australian Dictionary of Biography
- Walter Withers on ArtistsFootsteps.com
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Withers, Walter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Withers, Walter Herbert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 22, 1854 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Aston Manor |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 13, 1914 |
| Place of death | Eltham |