Christian Walter (1872-1938)
Pittsburgh, 1937
Christian Walter was born in Old Allegheny on the North Side of Pittsburgh in 1872. He had no formal art training and yet, led a long and successful career as an artist. Walter’s work was included in the first Carnegie International Exhibition, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Pennsylvania Academy.
Christian was very loyal to his hometown of Pittsburgh. He kept a studio downtown in the Penn Building and participated in the annual shows of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh until his death in 1938.
Christian Walter died in 1938 after complications due to an emergency operation. He was honored with a retrospective of 75 of his paintings at the Craft Avenue Associated Artists Gallery and a memorial exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
In Pittsburgh (1937), done under the Works Progress Administration (WPA—an organization created to help provide economic relief to the citizens of the United States who were suffering through the Great Depression), the artist has focused on the raggedy housing cobbled together near the mills that provided employment for residents. The smoke stacks of the mills provide the backdrop. Its less celebratory character conveys the sense of endless work to gain a meager living that was the lot of many who lived there. Walter was committed to local subject matter: “It is a mistake for artists of this district to leave the environs of Pittsburgh to seek material for landscape painting. To my mind no other place in the world has the wealth of material that can be found here at home.”
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