The Road to the Farm

Edward Arthur Walton was born in Renfrewshire in 1860 and received his early training at the Kunstacademie in Dusseldorf and the Glasgow School of Art. Early in his career he met Guthrie and Joseph Crawhall and like them, he was profoundly affected by the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage as is evinced in his early paintings of shepherd boys and country children. Although he excelled as a portrait painter, Caw noted that 'it is, however, as a painter of landscape, or of figure associated with landscape, that Walton has won his most distinctive success' (see J.L. Caw, Scottish Painting, 1975, pp. 371-2).