Melbourne Antiques

Description

Lovely Signed Coloured Engraving By Henry G Walker
Vivid colours. Slight age related boxing but does not detract form picture.
Depicting a castle and an estuary. Size 19 ins by 14.5ins
He became active as an etcher from around 1921, when he first exhibited at the Royal Birmingham Society. To make a living, he concentrated on popular architectural and topographical plates in various combinations of soft-ground etching, dry-point, and aquatint, both coloured and monochrome. The etchings are titled and signed in pencil Henry G.Walker, with H.G.W. or H.G.Walker on the plate itself, though he was known to friends and family as 'Harry'.

He produced over 150 designs, more than half of them of places in the South West. He was particularly successful with studies of harbours like Tenby and Brixham with their trawlers.

As the 'etching boom' of the 1920s began to recede with the onset of the Depression, he seems to have started to experiment with ink-and-wash designs for reproduction as coloured prints. They were chiefly of cats and dogs in humorous situations, somewhat in the manner of his slightly older contemporary Cecil Aldin.

Walker moved to Babbacombe in Devon in 1929, and set up his studio in a new house, but the venture was cut short by his early death in 1932. He was buried in Barton Cemetery Torquay