Walter Inglis Anderson (September 29, 1903 – November 30, 1965) was an American painter and writer.

Anderson died from cancer November 30, 1965, at the age of 62.

Early life and education

Anderson was born in New Orleans to George Walter Anderson, a grain broker, and Annette McConnell Anderson, a prominent New Orleans family member who had studied art at Newcomb College. He was the second of three brothers, the eldest being Peter Anderson and the youngest James McConnell "Mac" Anderson.

As a child, Anderson attended St. John's School in Manilus, New York until his schooling was interrupted at age 14 by World War I. He then transferred to the Manual Training School in New Orleans, Louisiana. After a year at Parsons, he won a scholarship to study at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Here (1924–1928) he would study under iconoclastic modernists like Henry McCarter, Hugh Breckenridge, and Arthur Carles, winning a Packard Award for his animal drawing and a Cresson Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him to spend a summer in France. While in France, Anderson was particularly impressed with cave paintings, which noticeably influenced his drawing style.

Anderson moved to Ocean Springs after his years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and worked as a designer in the family business, Shearwater Pottery. In 1928-29 he designed his earliest ceramic pieces: pelican and crab bookends, lampstands, peculiar "Resting" and "Sitting Geometric Cat"; a "Horse and Rider" and innumerable plates and vases. His work as a designer and decorator at Shearwater Pottery from 1928 until his death, included incised pieces, sgraffito work, underglaze decoration, woodcarvings of saints, and designs for furniture.

Among his early projects, launched with his younger brother James ("Mac"), was a "Shearwater Pottery Annex" which produced inexpensive figurines, giving Anderson enough of an income in 1932 to marry Agnes Grinstead "The wheels are turning again", he once wrote. "A bicycle seems to leave no room for other evils, or goods for that matter. It is an inclusive and exclusive wheel." <!-- Deleted image removed: right -->

One of his greatest works from this period is a series of murals in the Ocean Springs Community House. Along one wall, he painted the landing in Ocean Springs of the 17th-century French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. Along the opposite wall he painted what he called the "Seven Climates", in the sense of "a belt of the earth's surface contained between two given parallels of latitude." The Gulf Coast - Ocean Springs in particular - is seen as a microcosm of these climates, each of which Anderson associates with a corresponding celestial body and with a season of the year: Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, beginning with Mercury and ending with Uranus. Anderson must also have been aware of the doctrine that the seven planetary spheres, with their different tones, produce a celestial music. Around the same time, Anderson painted murals along the wooden walls of a padlocked room in his cottage at Shearwater. These murals, now called the Shearwater Cottage Murals, were discovered after his death and are inspired by Psalm 104. They are a radiant hymn to light and to the beauty of one day on the Coast, beginning on the east wall with sunrise and continuing around the room through noon, sunset and night. Both murals may be seen at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art.

When the Brooklyn Museum invited him to an exhibition of his linoleum block prints in 1948, he chose instead to travel to China, where he hoped to gaze upon unknown landscapes and examine Tibetan murals (the China trip ended, deep inland, when his passport and other belongings were stolen and Anderson returned, partly on foot, to his point of departure in Hong Kong.

Bibliography

Major works by and about Anderson are listed below. Most have been published by the University Press of Mississippi.

  • One World, Two Artists: John Alexander and Walter Anderson, Essays by Annalyn Swan, Bradley Sumrall, and Jimmy Buffett, New Orleans: Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 2011, distributed by University of Mississippi Press
  • Walter Anderson. A Symphony of Animals, Introduction by Mary Anderson Pickard, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996
  • Agnes Grinstead Anderson. Approaching the Magic Hour. Memories of Walter Anderson Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1989
  • Walter Anderson. Birds. Introductory essay by Mary Anderson Pickard. Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1990
  • The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson. Edited by Redding S. Sugg Jr. Rev. ed., Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985
  • Walter Anderson's Illustrations of Epic and Voyage. Edited and with an introduction by Redding S. Sugg Jr. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press; London and Amsterdam: Feffer & Simmons, 1980
  • Redding S. Sugg Jr. A Painter's Psalm. The Mural from Walter Anderson's Cottage. Rev. ed. Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1992
  • Walter Anderson: Realizations of the Islander. Selections of Paintings and Essay by John Paul Driscoll. The Walter Anderson Estate, 1985
  • The Voluptuous Return. Still Life by Walter Inglis Anderson. Foreword by Patti Carr Black. Ocean Springs: Family of Walter Anderson, 1999
  • Lisa Graley, ed. Interdisciplinary Humanities: Special Issue 2004-2005: Walter Inglis Anderson. National Association of Humanities Education. Vol. 21.1 2004
  • Anne R. King. Walls of Light. The Murals of Walter Anderson. Jackson: University Press
  • Christopher Maurer with Maria Estrella Iglesias, Dreaming in Clay on the Gulf of Mississippi. Life and Art at Shearwater. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.
  • Christopher Maurer, Fortune's Favorite Child: the Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003
  • Norma Tilden, "Walter Anderson, Zographos," Yale Review, April 2005 (No. 2).
  • Dod Stewart, Shearwater Pottery, privately printed, 2005.
  • Documentary film, 2005: Win Riley and David Wolf, Walter Anderson: Realizations of an Artist (with the participation of the Anderson family and critics Christopher Maurer, Paul Richards, and Patti Carr Black.)[https://www.walterandersondocumentary.com]
  • Mary Anderson Pickard and Patricia Pinson, editors, "Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson." Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
  • Patti Carr Black. American Masters of the Mississippi Gulf Coast : George Ohr, Dusti Bongé, Walter Anderson, Richmond Barthe. Jackson, Miss.: Mississippi Arts Commission; Starkville, Miss.: Department of Art, Mississippi State University, 2009.

Some of Anderson's best watercolors, oils, drawings, and decorated pottery may be seen at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art; the Memphis Brooks Museum; the Mississippi Museum of Art (Jackson); and the Lauren Rodgers Museum of Art (Laurel). In 2003, his work was featured in an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, titled "Everything I See is New and Strange."

References

  • Official web site*Christopher Maurer / Maria Estrella Iglesias Research Collection on Walter Anderson and Shearwater Pottery at University of Mississippi
  • Garden & Gun Magazine: Walter Anderson's Murals Sing Out
  • National Public Radio: The Art of Walter Anderson
  • National Public Radio: A Family of Artists Picks Up the Pieces
  • National Public Radio: A Painter's Hurricanes by Christopher Maurer
  • Walter Anderson: Realizations of an Artist Documentary Film. Mississippi
  • Walter Anderson: Extraordinary Life and Art of the Islander. Mississippi Public Broadcasting.11/04/21.
  • Walter Anderson Papers, Special Collections at The University of Southern Mississippi (de Grummond Children's Literature Collection)