Arthur George Walker was born in Hackney, England London on 20 October 1861. From 1883 to 1887 he studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London where he received a number of awards, and in Paris. He subsequently worked as a sculptor, mosaic artist, painter and illustrator. Walker was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London from 1884 to 1937. He also exhibited at the International Society of sculptors, Painters and Gravers, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, Royal Miniature Society and Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London; Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; Nottingham Castle Museum; Leeds City Art Gallery; Aberdeen Artists' Society; the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; and at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.
Hs ivory sculpture 'Christ at the Whipping Post', which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1925, was purchased that year by the Chantry Bequest.
Commissions on which Walker worked included mosaic work for St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow Road, Bayswater, London (1880s), and at at Whitelands College, Kings Road in Chelsea; the Chariot of Elijah and The Scroll of Enoch, stone carving for the Church of the Ark of the Covenant, Stamford Hill, London (c.1892); a bronze statue of Georgina Cowper-Temple, Lady Mount Temple for Torquay, Devon (1903); statue of Florence Nightingale at Waterloo Place, London (1915); memorial to Florence Nightingale in the Crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (1916); two busts of Louise Aldrich-Blake at Tavistock Square Garden, London (c.1926); a memorial to Frederick Smith, 2nd Viscount Hambledon for Victoria Gardens, London (1929); a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst at Victoria Tower Gardens, London (1930); and an equestrian statue of John Wesley for the New Room in Bristol (1930s).
Following World War One he was commissioned to design several war memorials, including for Ironbridge in Shropshire; Heston in Middlesex; Heath Town, Wolverhampton; Shrewsbury School in Shropshire; Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk; to the 6th Battalion Gordon Highlanders in Keith, Moray; Bassingbourn cum Kneesworth, Cambridgeshire; in the Cathedral Quarter, Derby in Derbyshire; Chesham in Buckinghamshire; Sevenoaks in Kent; Dartford in Kent; St. Anne in the East Church in the Commercial Road in Limehouse, London; and St Werburgh's Church in Derby, Derbyshire.
Walker was a founder member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (RBS) in 1904. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (FRBS) in 1923; an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1925; and a Royal Academician (RA) in 1936. He was also elected a member of the Art Workers Guild in 1892.
His address was given as 6 Mark's Square, Hackney, London in 1884; 5 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, London in 1885; 41 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, London in 1886 and 1904; and 5 Cedar Studios, Glebe Place, Chelsea, London in 1905 and 1933; and Cedar Studio, Blake Hill Crescent, Parkstone, Dorset in 1934 and 1937. He died in Parkstone, Dorset on 13 September 1939.
Text source: Arts + Architecture Profiles from Art History Research net (AHRnet) https://www.arthistoryresearch.net/
