Walter Gould

Walter Gould (1829, Philadelphia - 1893, Florence) was an American painter; known for his Orientalist scenes. He in addition to painted landscapes, portraits and still-lifes.

At an upfront age, he began studying gone the panorama painter, John Rowson Smith and the portrait painter, Thomas Sully. At the age of fourteen, he exhibited his first portrait and, the in imitation of year, exhibited later than the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He higher worked in Virginia as well, although most of those works were purposeless during the Civil War.

In 1849, he went to Europe and, after a brief stay in Paris, moved to Italy and decided in Florence. There, he met and befriended the sculptor, Hiram Powers and appears to have become a sort of uncle to his numerous children. In 1850, Powers entrusted him subsequent to the task of salvaging a statue of his that had been floating in a shipwreck: a task in which Gould was successful.

In 1851, Powers encouraged him to travel to Turkey for a realistic portrait commission and provided him like the means. The commission operational Lajos Kossuth, who had fled there as a refugee and was blooming in Kütahya. With a letter of opening provided by the British Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, he was competent to meet Kossuth and paint his portrait. Judging from his letters to Powers, they plus became near friends. While there, he visited Istanbul and created some of the Orientalist works for which he is best remembered, as without difficulty as portraits, including one of the Grand Vizier, Mustafa Reşid Pasha.

A brief visit to America was disappointing in terms of sales, and he returned to Florence. He would continue to paint some Orientalist genre scenes, in accessory to many portraits; holding a major exhibit in 1866 at the National Academy of Design which was not, however, well-received by the critics. In his well along years, a visit from his outmoded friend, Moncure Conway, found him as soon as dimming eyesight from painting too many portrait miniatures, and loving of talking practically the past.

He died of paralysis, while recovering from a stroke. A year after his death, his family made a gift of some of his works to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but the good majority are in private collections. In many cases, their present locations are unknown.

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