biographie de Walter SHIRLAW (1838-1909)

Birth place: Paisley, Scotland

Death place: Madrid, Spain

Addresses: Grew up in Hoboken, NJ; NYC; Chicago; 1865-70; Munich, 1870-77; NYC, 1877-on

Profession: Genre, mural, and portrait painter, illustrator, teacher, and banknote engraver

Studied: apprenticed in the early 1850s to a banknote engraver; Munich, Germany,1870-77, painting and drawing with Raab, Wagner, Ramberg, Lindenschmidt

Exhibited: Royal Acad., Munich (medal); PAFA Ann., 1861-1905 (12 times); Centennial Expo, Phila., 1876 (medal); NAD, 1861-99, 1903-10 (prize, 1895); Boston AC, 1876-1906; Brooklyn AA, 1877-80, 1885, 1892, 1912; NY Etching Club, 1883; AIC, 1888-1908; Paris Expo, 1889 (prize); Worlds Columbian Expo., 1893 (also decorated one of the domes of the Liberal Art sBldg.); Pan-Am. Expo, Buffalo, 1901 (medal); St. Louis Expo, 1904 (medal); Corcoran Gal annuals, 1907-08; after his death, memorial exhibitions were held in Chicago, New York, Buffalo, St. Louis, and Washington, DC.

Member: NA, 1888; SAA (founder/first pres., 1875); SC, 1879; Century Assn.; AWCS; Mural Painters; Artists Aid Soc.; AIC (founder), 1868.

Work: BMFA; NMAA; LOC (ceiling); MMA; AIC; St. Louis AM, Albright-Knox AG, Buffalo; Indianapolis MA.

Comments: Began as a banknote engraver and after several years took up painting, although he continued to support himself through his engraving. From 1865 to 1870, he worked for the Western Bank Note and Engraving Company of Chicago, during which time he was also active in the founding of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1869, he sketched in the Rockies for six months, going abroad the following year to study art. Around 1877, he returned to NYC, where he painted figural groups, primarily rural scenes and landscapes with animals, and also exelled as a muralist. In addition he worked as a magazine illustrator (for Century and Harper's Monthly), designed of stained glass windows, and was an influential teacher at the ASL. In 1889 he was among the five artists sent to take the census of American Indians on the Crow and Cheyenne reservations; his text along with color reproductions of his paintings was included in the report Indians Taxed (1890).

Sources: G&W; WW08; DAB; Dreier, "Walter Shirlaw," with 5 repros.; N.Y. Times, Dec. 30, 1909; Art Annual, VIII, obit.; Baigell, Dictionary; P & H Samuels, 440; American Painter-Etcher Movement 46; Falk, Exh. Record Series.

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