Artists

Walter H. Williams

In all these visionary happenings, Walter Williams makes the joy of life unending.

- David Driskell, artist, curator & scholar

Walter H. Williams was born and raised in Brooklyn by his artistically-minded mother and very strict step-father. To escape the rules and restrictions of his home he would flee to a childhood dream-world, and it is easy to imagine that this became the vision he gifts to us in his printmaking. As he grew up Williams followed a conventional path for the period, serving in the army in World War II, getting married and having children.

His break with convention came in 1948, when he left his family to move to Greenwich Village and pursue art, where, encouraged by his artistic and musical friends, he ultimately used the G.I. Bill to attend classes at Brooklyn Museum School of Art from 1951-55. In 1953, Williams was awarded a scholarship to attend the Skowhegan School of Paintings & Sculpture in Maine, where he was allocated a room with fellow artist David Driskell. They became lifelong friends and Driskell would champion Williams’ work throughout his life, particularly in his later capacity as a curator and scholar recognised for his specialisation in, and support of, Black American Art.

Free Walter H. Williams Art Auction Estimates

Find out how much your Walter H. Williams artwork could sell for at auction. Contact our auction team for a complimentary valuation.

Add a Lot Alert

Try our lot alert service. If a forthcoming lot matches your search criteria you'll get an email with the lot details.

A boy chases after a butterfly, he is a Black boy but the colour of his skin does not hinder him from being every boy in the world who seeks to know the freedom of flight. A girl picks flowers and she witnesses the sumptuous smells of a thousand perfumes and colourful dreams…

- David Driskell

Travel became a significant part of Williams’ life and artistic development. In 1955 a fellowship award allowed him to travel internationally, and he chose Denmark as his destination; his Grandfather was from the Danish West Indies and had shared evocative stories about his time there in his youth. Williams returned to Denmark the following year and visited the island of Bornholm, which was to have a significant impact on his artistic work, moving his subject matter from urban realms to country fields populated by children and natural symbols such as butterflies, birds and sunflowers that convey feelings of freedom, joy and re-birth.

Williams continued to travel internationally, seemingly finding a freedom abroad that he couldn’t quite experience at home. He spent a few years in the early 1960s in Mexico and held several exhibitions there. He also spent time in London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam and continued to exhibit internationally before settling in Denmark with his second wife (a Danish citizen), in 1969. Williams himself gained Danish citizenship in 1979.

Despite having success in his lifetime, including the high-profile purchase of ‘Girl with Butterflies #2’ by the Smithsonian Institute for display in the White House and inclusion in many significant exhibitions at home and abroad, by the end of his life, he was largely unknown. Fortunately, in recent years, as there has been a re-assessment of Black artists and the importance of their work, Williams has begun to be re-discovered and his talent and vision recognised. Looking at his woodblock prints now, we are able to see his ability to bring a bold vision to life, his incisive cutting bringing vitality to his compositions and the vivid colour choices transporting us away from the everyday.

Paintings and prints echo more than childhood memories, but also a dream world where the mind is at peace with nature and self. . .one of the rays of light so often needed in a so often light-deprived world.

- Driskell

The four lots offered here have lovely provenance connecting them back to the artist’s studio. The current owner’s mother moved to New York in the early 1960s. A cartographer by trade, she made many connections in art and publishing in the city. One of her contacts was involved in the re-publishing of a travel guide, ‘Mexico on Five Dollars a Day’ and she volunteered to travel to Mexico on a fact-checking mission, where her existing cartography skills could also be of use.

It is believed that as part of this trip, she met the artist. They become good friends and over the duration of her time in Mexico she ended up renting his spare room and working part-time in his studio doing stone cuttings for rubbings: ‘He’s going to do the drawing and then let me do the cutting (providing I can do it reasonably)’ (Letter from the owner’s mother to her family). The family believe she acquired the works directly from the artist at this time, bringing them back to Scotland and then passing them down to her children.