32 Facts About Ethel Walker

From 1936, Walker was a member of The London Group.

Ethel Walker achieved considerable success throughout her career, becoming the first female member elected to the New English Art Club in 1900.

Ethel Walker's works were exhibited widely during her lifetime, at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Arts and at the Lefevre Gallery.

Ethel Walker represented Britain at the Venice Biennale four times, in 1922,1924,1928 and 1930.

Ethel Walker is acknowledged as a lesbian artist, a fact which critics have noted is boldly apparent in her preference for women sitters and female nudes.

Ethel Walker was born on 9 June 1861 in Edinburgh, the younger child of Arthur Abney Ethel Walker and his second wife, Isabella, a Scot.

Ethel Walker's father was from Rotherham's Walker family of iron founders.

Ethel Walker attended Putney School of Art, and visited Madrid, where she made copies of works by Velazquez.

Ethel Walker attended the Westminster School of Art in London, where a then popular artist, Frederick Brown, was a teacher.

Ethel Walker produced a large body of works from different genres, to include flowers, seascapes, landscapes and mythical subjects.

Ethel Walker's influences included Greek and Renaissance art, as well as Chinese painting and Taoist philosophy.

Ethel Walker was a supporter of the natural female form, often publicly rebuking other women for wearing makeup and heavy clothing that hid their form.

Ethel Walker's models were never allowed to wear makeup, lipstick, or nail polish during sittings.

Ethel Walker painted a series of works that reflected mythological themes, and several works depicting nude female models.

In one piece, titled Invocation, Ethel Walker used 25 female models, all either scantly clad or nude, kneeling around three female models who are wearing sheer cloth.

The art produced by Ethel Walker, who died in London, did have a positive and thought-provoking impact on art as a whole.

Ethel Walker's art is regularly displayed in exhibits at many galleries, most notably The Gatehouse Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland.

Ethel Walker was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1940.

Ethel Walker painted the young Barbara Hepworth while she was staying in Robin Hood's Bay, where Ethel Walker owned a cottage overlooking the sea.

Ethel Walker was regarded as an especially social artist, living for many years in her studio at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and took an active part in the artistic life of the area.

Walker had offered to paint Woolf nude, as Woolf described in a letter: 'I am going to be painted, stark naked, by a woman called Ethel Walker who says I am the image of Lilith'.

Ethel Walker painted Woolf's sister Bell in 1937, seated in a domestic interior possibly being that of Charleston Farmhouse.

Ethel Walker wrote in a letter urging Rothenstein to purchase more of her works on behalf of the gallery that, 'every purchase of my work strengthens and enriches the sum of the good pictures at the Tate Gallery'.

Ethel Walker gave lessons to the young Cathleen Mann, whom she continued to influence upon Mann's enrolment at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Ethel Walker was disapproving of cosmetics, and was known to rebuke women in public on account of their makeup.

Ethel Walker required her models to remove lipstick and nail polish before entering her studio.

Ethel Walker was too old to support Kratochwil's career as she might have hoped, and Kratochwil drew the artist lying on her death-bed.

Ethel Walker exhibited widely during her lifetime, and achieved considerable recognition.

Ethel Walker has made up her mind in a very definite way and expresses it without hesitation.

Ethel Walker's work is the strongest in the gallery, and it is the most unmistakably feminine'.

Ethel Walker exhibited over a long period with The Redfern Gallery, including exhibitions in 1932 and 1952.

The Queen's interest in Ethel Walker was likely influenced by her artistic mentor Jasper Ridley, whose collection included a number of works by Ethel Walker.