Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-310
Artist: Walker, Frederick
Date: 1863 (estimated)
State: 1/1
Size: 11.4cm x 14.9cm
Medium: Etching
| Alternative Title(s) | The Wayfarers |
| Details | Etching. Black ink on white paper, possibly wove. British Museum version has the following information; made by Frederick Walker and printed by John Postle Heseltine (his assistant). It was published by Noseda. At bottom of the British Museum Impression is the inscription ‘J. Noseda, 109 The Strand’. |
| Description | The background depicts the outskirts of the town of Haslemere, Surrey where Walker painted en plein air during February 1863. The work bears a similarity to Walker’s 1866 painting The Wayfarers (Private Collection) indeed it seems likely the etching was produced during the same period.
Vincent Van Gogh was particularly impressed by Walker’s etching. Writing to his friend, the artist Anthon van Rappard, Van Gogh asks; ‘Do you know The Wayfarers by Fred Walker? It’s a large etching of a blind old man led by a boy along a frozen road, with a ditch with copse-wood covered with glazed frost, and osiers, on a winter evening. It’s certainly one of the most sublime creations in that genre, with an utterly modern, distinctive sentiment, perhaps less robust than Dürer in his Knight, Death and Devil, but perhaps even more intimate, and certainly as original and sincere’. |
| Exhibited Dundee | An etching entitled Leading the Blind by F. Walker A.R.A. was exhibited at the 1880 Dundee Fine Art Exhibition (Fourth Gallery, No. 889, no price). Dundee Fine Art Exhibition Catalogue 1880, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum.An etching entitled The Wayfarers: after Fred. Walker and etched by Charles Waltner was also exhibited at the Dundee Fine Art Exhibition, Albert Institute, 1882 (Fifth Gallery, No. 859 £12.12). Dundee Fine Art Exhibition Catalogue 1882, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum. |
| Other Collections |
|
| References |
|