Born in England and active in London from 1863 until 1885, James Clarke Waite likely acquired his meticulous genre style at the Royal Academy, where he often exhibited. A member of the Royal Society of British Artists, he showed more than 117 works at Suffolk Street. He also exhibited at the British Institution and the Old Watercolour Society. ... MORE

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, William Aiken Walker was a successful itinerant artist who spent much of his life traveling throughout the South creating paintings of rural and urban genre scenes, figures and landscapes. Following a route of major port cities, railroad towns, and resort spots from Baltimore to Charleston to New Orleans, he ... MORE

Influenced by the French impressionists during her travels abroad, Martha Walter's canvases of light-hearted genre scenes and landscapes were spontaneously executed with a palette of vivid colors. Born in Philadelphia, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she studied under William Merritt Chase. At his insistence, ... MORE

This serene view of Virginia's Natural Bridge by Jacob Caleb Ward is an important early record of the Southern landmark Thomas Jefferson described as “one of the sublimest curiosities in nature.” Only recently discovered and extensively researched, the painting is one of a pair of panels the artist created ... MORE

Though William Dickinson Washington is best known for such important icons of Southern culture as The Burial of Latane and General Marion and His Men in Pee Dee Swamp, he was also a successful genre and portrait painter. Born in Clarke County, Virginia, he moved with his family to Washington, D.C. in 1834. Beginning as a draftsman in the ... MORE

Elizabeth Fisher Washington is an artist most recognized for landscapes of her native state of Pennsylvania. Born in the small town of Siegfried's Bridge, near Bethlehem, she pursued a career in art and attended the Philadelphia Museum School (now the Philadelphia College of Art) and also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts ... MORE

In the days before photo-journalism, it was the job of the artist-correspondent—or special artist, as he was sometimes called—to make a visual record of current events. The War Between the States created an unprecedented demand for the skills of such talents. Young men trained in the craft of engraving ... MORE

Though her work is largely identified with Marin County, California, Ludmilla Pilat Welch had abiding Southern ties. Her father, a privileged political refugee from Austria, immigrated to Savannah, Georgia in 1848 and eventually owned a peach orchard in Dalton. Following the Civil War, Carl Pilat moved to Ossining, New York, where ... MORE

One of the leading antebellum Southern artists, William Edward West created brilliant portrayals of the region's military heroes, civic leaders, and society figures. This portrait presents Baltimore matron Elizabeth Steuart Calvert, the wife of George Henry Calvert, a highly cultured gentleman who maintained close friendships with such literary ... MORE

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Thomas Wightman studied with celebrated portrait artist Henry Inman at the National Academy of Design in New York in the 1830s. Influenced by this master, Wightman too became well known for both portraiture and still life paintings, the latter of which were often installed as decorative panels in Charleton's ... MORE

Raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, Catherine Wiley attended the University of Tennessee before spending two years with Frank DuMond at the Art Students League in New York. Returning to Knoxville in 1905, she began a thirteen-year teaching stint at the university, while also pursuing a career in painting. She exhibited locally, at the National ... MORE

Active as both an artist and educator in the first half of the twentieth century, Nell Witters pursued her craft at several of this nation’s leading institutions and with highly regarded teachers of the day. She spent her childhood in Saginaw, Michigan, but later journeyed to larger cities for advanced training. In New York, she enrolled ... MORE

Born in Seekonk, Massachusetts, Ellsworth Woodward attended the Rhode Island School of Design and then traveled to Munich where he studied with Car Marr and Samuel Richards. In 1884, he settled in New Orleans and taught art, establishing a department at Sophie Newcomb College, of which he became the director. He also taught at Tulane University ... MORE

One of the South's leading photographers of the early twentieth century, Bayard Wootten created a highly selective body of work ranging from evocative nature studies and botanicals, to haunting images of black and white field workers, to Appalachian mountaineers. Originally trained as a painter, Wootten worked in photography's pictorial ... MORE

Once described as "the undisputed top illustrator in the nation," George Hand Wright was born to a Quaker family in Fox Chase, Pennsylvania. The son of a blacksmith, he studied at the Spring Garden Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and in Paris and Munich, before settling in New York City. By the turn of the ... MORE