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Today's Charlotte Woman, Holiday 2005

The Illustrator's Daughter
Claire Walker Fleming Honors Her Father
By Keeping His Legacy Alive

By Michelle Harvey

You never know when you head out on assignment just what story you may find. Sure, it seemed simple enough at first glance: Go to Elder Gallery on South Boulevard and interview Claire Walker Fleming, the daughter of little-known British born watercolorist Ernest Walker.

When I arrived, however, I was met with a two-pronged love story. First, and perhaps, foremost, was the painter's obvious love for his subject matter. Walker's extensive collection of watercolor miniatures depicting the New York of the 1920s, '30s and '40s is so evocative, viewers will find themselves immediately transported back to that colorful place and time.

But equally important was the other love story I found: a 75 year-old daughter's passion for sharing her father's work, and her commitment to bringing that work into the public eye–even after her father's death, and despite her ongoing battle with cancer.

It hasn't been an easy thing for this daughter to do.

A Promise To Daddy

Fleming lives in the quiet outpost of Marshville in a small home filled with almost 150 of her father's watercolors, many of which, until recently, languished in a scrapbook. It may sound like a gallerist's dream come true, but gaining entrée into the Charlotte art scene was no simple feat.

"I was turned away from one gallery," recalls Fleming. "They said they didn't want ‘a dead artist’ because he couldn't produce any more work for them."

But Fleming could not forget a conversation she'd had with her father just before he passed away. "I said, 'Daddy, what do you want me to do with your work?’” she recalls. "He said, 'I would like other people to enjoy what's given me so much pleasure.' "

So, undaunted by rejection, Fleming started to hold small exhibitions of her father's work: one in 1994 at the Fine Arts Center in Camden, S.C., one in 1998 at the Union County Arts Center in Monroe, N.C., and one in 1999 at the Marshville Library. Still, she yearned to show her father's work in a larger venue.

Kindred Spirits

Fleming says the moment she walked into Larry Elder's gallery, it appealed to her. Apart from empathizing with Fleming's illness, there was something about this woman and her mission that moved Elder, too. "I've had experiences in my life in which I had no idea why, but I acted on impulse, and then they would turn out so well," Elder says. "I believe you should always keep your door open, and I had a feeling this was something good walking through the door."

Fleming discuss her father’s work.

Although Elder notes that, as a rule, watercolors don't sell well in Charlotte, he visited Fleming's home in Marshville and found her father's work to be outstanding. "I love miniatures," Elder says, "and to paint on such a small scale...clear, crisp...you can see it, even after almost a hundred years. Flipping through Claire's scrapbook, what struck me about these watercolors was they are like quick snapshots of Americana from the 1920s through the ‘50s. I knew I wanted to help Claire honor her father."

Ernest Walker

The man, the artist and the loving father who inspired this story is Ernest Walker. Born in 1892 in Manchester, England, even as a child, Walker knew he was destined to be an artist.

"Daddy painted when he was a boy," Fleming recalls. "His mother wanted him to be a doctor, but he told me that one day when he was in anatomy class at Owens Medical Academy - he was 14 or so - they were shown some cadavers. He said students were dropping left and right, and he decided that it just wasn't for him."

At 16, Walker won a three-year scholarship to the Sheffield School of Art after submitting a pencil drawing, The Sleeping Bloodhound, but feeling that his talent might be better honed elsewhere, Walker applied to the Manchester School of Art, where he won another scholarship. Upon completing his course of study at Manchester, Walker was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Art in London, where he won many honors, including two highly esteemed King's Prizes. He went on to work for several years at the Carlton Studios in London, first in oils, but eventually, gravitating to his true medium, watercolor.

Anxious to study in the United States, Walker headed for America in 1918 - just in time to join the Army and get sent back to Europe to fight in World War I. Upon returning to the States after the war, Walker supported himself by painting commissions for periodicals, such as Fortune, House and Gardens, McCalls, Woman's Home Companion, Pictorial Review, and Country Life.

Painting For Work And For Pleasure

"In 1928, just before the crash," says Fleming, "my father said, 'I'm going to sell my stocks and go to England. 'That's where he met and married my mother." The Walkers returned to America, but in 1936, House and Garden commissioned Walker to paint illustrations of some old English manor house interiors. In 1939, Walker and his young family moved to an old house in Redding, Conn., where, according to Fleming, Mark Twain once lived and wrote. From this home, Walker commuted to work in New York, where he also maintained a studio, rendering watercolor illustrations for Macy's, Lord & Taylor and Abraham & Strauss.

"Daddy did full-page ads, painting watercolor interiors for Baker Furniture. He was really a designer," Fleming notes. "He'd always say, With artwork, you can glamorize interiors, but with photography you can't."'

Fleming says that given a choice, her father would have liked to do nothing but paint landscapes. "During that time, he would drive his Chrysler convertible down to the Brooklyn piers and do miniatures of the docks and the life going on around them," she recalls. "He would paint the vendors with their pushcarts and the Italian-American markets, tenement buildings with laundry hanging out of the windows. He would often bring the miniatures home and enlarge the studies. He did so much work, in fact, that he had an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum, and then he was invited to be part of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City and several museums in Texas."

The Elder Exhibition

The letter of invitation from the Whitney, along with a small study and the larger painting that hung in the museum, is part of the exhibition at Elder's gallery. Elder says that the three will sell as a package for around $6,000 (other paintings will begin around $800).

The exhibition contains nearly 80 pieces, including some small oils, but the majority are watercolors of various sizes, from miniatures to larger format. "What amazes me still," says Elder, "is that many of the miniatures were in scrapbooks. It was an untouched body of work."

As you move from picture to picture, you find Walker's work at times whimsical and charmingly primitive, reminiscent of Gauguin, is with the painting of Fleming’s mother, Phyllis, lounging in the garden behind their home. And yet, when depicting beautiful living room interiors for ads in magazines, Walker's work can also be quite finely detailed.

Renaissance For A Painter

Fleming has retained some of her father's work for herself and her family as part of a private collection that never be sold. One, called Little Rose, is a piece she received when she married in 1951. Along "with that painting, Walker "willed family members several other pictures, including a portrait he'd done of Fleming and her brother as children.

For this daughter, a renewed interest in her father's work has resulted in unexpected benefits. "I was an artist myself," Fleming says. "I studied art and architecture in college, and did commercial art in the '50s. Then I had two boys, and I quit. When we started taking pictures off the walls for this exhibition, I began to do a study of my father's work and wanted to do a little plein air painting of my garden. My father always furnished me with paints as a young girl, and he wanted me to paint so badly He saved everything I did. The exhibit has inspired me, and I want to paint again. I want to paint different locations like my father did. I feel like I now have something to do in my old age."

The Elder Gallery exhibition of Ernest Walker's work is a dream finally realized for Fleming. "My father captured a time we won't see again," she says. "After World War I, everyone was happy. You could walk around docks in New York City and see the stevedores working, and no one would bother you.

"I knew I had to do something with his work. His pictures fill my house. It’s a security for me. Not monetarily. It’s like having my parents with me still. My father enriched my life. I hope this exhibition thrills others like his work has thrilled me. He would be so delighted by this exhibition. I am finally doing for him what he didn't have a chance to do - and I am fulfilling my promise to him."