William Henry Walker.

 260 by 180mm., ink and watercolour drawing, signed lower left, mounted, framed and glazed

W.H. Walker (1854-1940) is better known as the architect William Henry Romaine-Walker. He is remembered for the interior of Edwin Lutyen’s Lloyds Bank building at 68 Pall Mall, extensions to the Tate Gallery and the design for the British Museum gallery to house the Elgin Marbles. As a book illustrator he published a handful of works, including an edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1907. As a member of the family who ran Walker’s Galleries at 118 New Bond Street, he exhibited watercolours at the gallery in a number of solo shows. Reviewing the 1924 exhibition (entitled ‘Desire and Destiny’), The Times reported that “nobody else is working in quite the same vein, and Mr. Walker has a genuine turn for the ‘conceit’… his colour is generally pretty and sometimes charming, he has a feeling for quality and his invention never fails. The game of love, which he treats with ironical tenderness, provides him with most of his subjects.” (see The Times, 30 April 1924, page 12).