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Lot Essay
A native of Philadelphia, Martha Walter studied under the instruction of William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. While in Europe, Walter attended the Academie Grande Chaumiere and the acclaimed Academie Julian in Paris. She also traveled to Italy, France, Holland, Spain and Germany, only returning to the United States at the start of World War II. Walter exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1904, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, New York. Her paintings are included in some of the world's most notable collections, including the Musee d'Orsay and the Musee du Louvre in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Walter's paintings of families at Ellis Island exemplify American Realism at its best. These paintings simultaneously capture the joy of life juxtaposed with the dreary picture of human distress and suffering-consequences of the hazards of immigrant life. In Three Generations, Ellis Island, Walter uses her trademark energetic brushstrokes to depict crowds of Irish, Russian, and Chinese women and children who left their native countries in the hope of finding a new and a more charitable homeland.
Walter's paintings of families at Ellis Island exemplify American Realism at its best. These paintings simultaneously capture the joy of life juxtaposed with the dreary picture of human distress and suffering-consequences of the hazards of immigrant life. In Three Generations, Ellis Island, Walter uses her trademark energetic brushstrokes to depict crowds of Irish, Russian, and Chinese women and children who left their native countries in the hope of finding a new and a more charitable homeland.