THE SUNNY SOUTH: The Life and Art of William Aiken Walker

The meticulously researched and thoughtfully presented text offers both biography and critical analysis of William Aiken Walker (1839-1921), and is studded with color plates; followed by a lengthy chronology, which includes his works of art, 161 notes, bibliography, list of illustrations, and an index.

The itinerant artist William Aiken Walker is best remembered for his paintings of Old South plantations. Massive in size and layered with the relentless labor of that encapsulated economy, these works offer keen insight into the un-reconstructed Cotton Kingdom. Though created many years after the conclusion of the War Between the States, Walker's scenes record and revere a bygone day, a lost way of life filtered through an antebellum consciousness.

But there is much more to the nineteenth century Charlestonian and to his art. A career artist who painted for pay, Walker's productions fix him as a paragon of taste in art of the South. From youthful game still lifes to genteel portraiture, from idyllic rural cabin views to complex urban scenes, from large-scale figure studies to quiet sketches of surf and sky, each found a place in Walker's oeuvre and are included herein.

Out of Print. Condition: Very Fine.