
Edith Evans (1888–1976) as Florence Nightingale 1929
Agatha Walker (1888–1980)
Rotherham Museums, Arts and Heritage
Agatha Walker was born in Old Walsingham, Norfolk, England on 10 February 1888. In the 1911 she gave her occupation as Art Student, however, it is not known where she received her training. It has been speculated that it could have been at Sheffield School of Art [Jordan p. 12]. In c.1915 she designed the woodcut letterhead for the Arts & Crafts Howard Street Club in Sheffield and the poster for their exhibition in June-July 1915. In 1920, with her guardian Lucie Durnford (1863-), Walker moved to Kensington in London, where it would seem her career as an artist took off. In the early 1920s she began making a series of limited edition small figurines of actors and actresses in successful London stage productions which proved very successful.
[The figurines made by Walker in the 1920s and 1930s are discussed in detail in Jordan, Christopher. ‘Intertwining lives. In search of Agatha Walker, sculptor and pottery figure artist’. Journal of the Decorative Art Society 1850 to the Present vol. 35, 2011 pp. 8-33]
Walker also designed a number of book-jackets. Her work as an illustrator included seven hand-coloured wood-cut illustrations for Margaret Holden's translation of Emile Guillaumin's The Life of a Simple Man (1923); and illustrations for books published by Oxford University Press including by Paladins of India by Sir George Dunbar's (1932); The Gladiators by George John Whyte-Melville (1933); Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (1933); and Phroso by Anthony Hope (1934).
Walker exhibited at the London Salon, Royal Academy, Society of Women Artists, and Royal Miniature Society in London; Royal West of England Academy in Bristol; Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh; and at the Walker Art Gallery in Sheffield. She was a member of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society.
In 1923 Walker and Durnford left Kensington and moved to Seven Acres, a recently build Arts & Crafts house near Long Crendon in rural Buckinghamshire. In 1935 they relocated to Stoney Down, a house near Corfe Mullen in Dorset. Walker died in Ringwood, Hampshire on 10 February 1980.
Several examples of Walker's figurines are in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A larger collection consisting of at least 50 figures, mainly in plaster with some wax, of theatrical, religious and royal subjects and plaques related to religious subjects, and an archive have been acquired by Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society. The collection is held at the Dorset County Museum.
Text source: Arts + Architecture Profiles from Art History Research net (AHRnet) https://www.arthistoryresearch.net/