Town Meeting, Brittany by Martha Walter (1875-1976), oil on board, 14″ x 18″, signed lower right.
Town Meeting, Brittany was produced during Walter’s European escapades funded by the Cresson Travelling Scholarship. The piece is an excellent example of Walter’s mastery of the impressionist style, as demonstrated by her emphasis on shapes and colors as opposed to the minutiae. Despite this lack of meticulous detail, Walter effectively communicates the personality of both the environment and group of women at the forefront, as their dynamic positions and rosy cheeks portray a calm yet lively scene. The left-most woman appears to be focussed on her knitting, while the woman beside her gesticulates to her left. Walter’s composition prompts the viewer to focus on each cloaked woman, from left to right, before viewing the scene in its entirety, contributing to her overall mastery as an artist and proving this piece to be an aptly celebrated “impressionist jewel”.
Medium: Oil on board
We follow in the footsteps of the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia in our attempt to articulate Martha Walter’s under-appreciated artistic brilliance. They successfully accomplish this in their exhibition and associated publication Impressionist Jewels: The Paintings of Martha Walter, the collection from which our oil painting originates.
Born in Philadelphia in 1875, Martha Walter grew up in the Pennsylvania art community, having trained first at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts and then the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. At the latter, Walter was mentored by William Merritt Chase, becoming a favorite pupil of his and consequently the Academy’s. In 1908, Walter was awarded the school’s Cresson Traveling Scholarship and was able to fulfill the traditional Impressionist pilgrimage to Italy and France. Upon her return to America, Walter settled in New England and found regional success, most often portraying beach scenes with bright colors reminiscent of her European travels (as shown in the pieces Gondolas, Venice, Valencia, Tangier, and Moroccan Procession in the collection).
Despite her accolade-studded career, Walter was often absent from the discussion of contemporaries with more media savvy, like that of Robert Henri and Arthur B. Davies, or the few female darlings of journalists at the time, like Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux.
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