Martha Walter Sold at Auction Prices

Figure painter, Painter, b. 1875 - d. 1976

(b Philadelphia, PA, 1875; d Gloucester, MA, 1976) American Painter. Martha Walter is a well-known Philadelphia Impressionist. She studied under William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she received a number of prestigious awards including: the Toppan Prize, the Cresson Traveling Scholarship and the Mary Smith Prize for the best painting by a resident female artist. Her traveling scholarship gave her the opportunity to travel through France, Spain, Italy and Holland. In Paris she studied at the Academie Grande Chaumiere and the Academie Julian before establishing her own studio in the Rue de Bagneaus. Before the First World War she returned to the United States and settled in Gloucester, Massachusetts; she also began teaching at the New York School of Art, run by her old teacher William Merritt Chase. Walter is known for her depictions of immigrants entering the country at Ellis Island and orientalist compositions from her later travels in North Africa but most of all for her charming beach scenes done in Gloucester, Coney Island, Atlantic City and along the French Coast.