New York, NY– Lincoln Glenn Gallery is pleased to announce Martha Walter: A World in Watercolors, a solo exhibition bringing together nearly thirty watercolors dating from approximately 1910 to 1935. Featuring works created in the artists’ colony of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and during Walter’s travels through Europe and North Africa, the exhibition explores her enduring fascination with coastal communities, bustling marketplaces, and everyday life. Together, these works reveal an artist whose keen observation and command of watercolor gave lasting form to fleeting encounters with people and places.
Born in Philadelphia in 1875, Walter studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under William Merritt Chase, who became her principal mentor. She also attended his Shinnecock Summer School of Art on Long Island, developing an appreciation for painting outdoors and responding directly to her surroundings. Awarded the Academy’s Toppan Prize in 1902 and a Cresson Traveling Scholarship the following year, Walter continued her education in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Julian. Finding academic instruction increasingly restrictive, she established an independent studio on the Rue de Bagneaux, pursuing the expressive brushwork and luminous color that would distinguish her mature work.
Travel became central to Walter’s practice. Often accompanied by fellow artist Alice Schille, she explored European cities, fishing villages, and seaside resorts, finding subjects in their streets, harbors, and public gathering places. Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the Adriatic coast supplied excellent subject matter for her works. By the early 1910s, Walter was working in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the waterfront and surrounding beaches became important subjects. Fishing boats, working harbors, and summer visitors provided opportunities to study the interaction of light, color, and movement. Her increasingly spontaneous handling allowed a few deft strokes to suggest a figure, the silhouette of a vessel, or the reflection of a building across water.
Watercolor was particularly suited to Walter’s mobile practice. Its portability enabled her to work readily while traveling, while its transparency allowed her to preserve the brightness of the paper beneath her washes. Passages of saturated pigment alternate with lightly touched or unpainted areas, creating a lively interplay between description and suggestion. Figures and architecture emerge through economical marks, conveying the atmosphere of a place without sacrificing its particular character.
During her subsequent travels through North Africa, Walter turned her attention to the streets, bazaars, shops, and cafés of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya. Sunlit walls, shaded passageways, and groups of figures offered new relationships of color and form. In Italy and Spain, particularly Seville, she likewise explored the architecture and daily activity of cities and towns. Across these varied settings, her attention remained grounded in the rhythms of ordinary life: people gathering, conversing, working, and moving through shared spaces.
Martha Walter: A World in Watercolors will be shown at the gallery’s Upper East Side location from January 7 to February 19, 2027. An illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm. For additional information or general inquiries, please contact Lincoln Glenn Gallery at gallery@lincolnglenn.com or (646) 764-9065. For press inquiries, please contact Jenny Mushkin Goldman at jenny@agencyesta.com.
