William Aiken Walker

William Aiken Walker (March 11, 1839 – January 3, 1921) was an American player best known for genre paintings of black sharecroppers. He after that documented the American Civil War mature during his support in the Confederate Army.

Walker was born to an Irish Protestant dad and a mom of South Carolina background in Charleston, South Carolina in 1839. In 1841, after his dad died, Walker's relatives remained in Charleston where Walker grew up. (Seibels)

In 1861, during the American Civil War, Walker was conscripted in the Confederate Army and was sent to Morris Island as portion of the Palmetto Guard. Almost immediately, Walker was sent upon to Richmond and Camp Davis. Four months later, he usual a medical release from the army. For the remainder of the clash he served as a civilian draftsman to the Confederate Engineers Corps and made maps and drawings of Charleston's defenses. (Seibels) He was estranged from the military at the decline of 1864. After the Civil War, Walker moved to Baltimore, where he produced small paintings of the "Old South" to sell as tourist souvenirs.

In 1868 Walker painted the ruins of the Cathedral of Saint John and Saint Finbar that burned down in December 1861 in a ember that ravaged Charleston, South Carolina.

He is best known for his paintings depicting the lives of destitute black emancipated slaves, especially sharecroppers in the post-Reconstruction American South. Two of his paintings were reproduced by Currier and Ives as chromolithographs. Walker continued painting until his death upon January 3, 1921, in Charleston, where he is buried in the family scheme at Magnolia Cemetery.