Walter Parsons Shaw Griffin (1861–1935) was an American painter. Griffin was born in

Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropo ...

, where his father carved ship

figurehead In politics, a figurehead is a person who ''de jure'' (in name or by law) appears to hold an important and often supremely powerful title or office, yet ''de facto'' (in reality) exercises little to no actual power. This usually means that they ...

s. In 1877 he entered the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachus ...

in Boston as a scholarship student, and in 1885 entered the Academy school in New York City, where he remained through 1887 while teaching at the Ethical Culture Society. He moved to Paris in 1887, where he studied at the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centur ...

and exhibited at the Salon of 1889. In 1890 he settled in Fleury, where he traveled and painted in the

Barbizon Barbizon () is a commune (town) in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest. Demographics The inhabitants are called ''Barbizonais''. Art history The Barbizon school of painters is nam ...

area. By the late 1890s, he opened the Walter Griffin's Summer Painting School in

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...

, Canada, and in 1898 began teaching at the Art Society of Hartford, Connecticut, moving to

Old Lyme, Connecticut Old Lyme is a coastal town in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The main street of the town, Lyme Street, is a historic district with several homes once owned by sea captains. Lyme Academy of Fine Arts is located in Old Lyme and the ...

, in 1904. He was the husband of British-born American journalist and photographer Lillian Baynes Griffin (1871–1916). After his divorce in 1908, he passed the years 1909–1918 in Europe, returning to

's Stroudwater neighborhood from 1918 until 1922, then living in France from 1923 to 1933. In 1933 he returned to

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

, where he lived until his death.

References

Article from Florence Griswold Museum
* David Bernard Dearinger, ''Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design: 1826-1925'', Hudson Hills, 2004, page 239. {{DEFAULTSORT:Griffin, Walter 1861 births 1935 deaths Artists from Portland, Maine School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts 20th-century American painters Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters