Self portrait
Artist, photographer, musician, and Southern gentleman, William Aiken Walker travelled throughout the south making his living primarily as an artist, achieving a level of popularity and fame that made his work not only sought by collectors but also a tempting target for art forgers. His greatest popularity came with his depictions of Black life in the south, showing field hands, washerwomen, and other working people, but he was also known for landscapes, city vistas, and animals. He painted in oils and generated many sketches as preliminaries for his paintings.
Walker was born in Charleston, South Carolina. As a child, he loved to draw. No art academy was available at the time, so Walker taught himself by careful observation, and the art he produced as an adult was known for its attention to detail. His first chance to exhibit his work came at the South Carolina Institute’s first annual fair when Walker was only eleven years old.
A man on the move who needed to make a living, William Aiken Walker followed the art market in both location and in subject and style. Genre images, particularly of former slaves, became central to his work, and these scenes were mainly typical stereotypes the art-buying public wanted. In the late 1870s, he began wintering in Florida. In 1881, the artist found himself at the boarding house of Bartola and Martha Pacetti in Ponce Park at Mosquito Inlet. His friendship with the Pacetti family would last nearly 30 years.
Walker sitting on the side porch of the Pacetti Hotel, c1900
When the United States Light-House Establishment purchased 10 acres of Pacetti land at Mosquito Inlet for their new lighthouse, Walker urged the Pacettis to take the money and add hotel rooms to their boarding house. The new hotel rooms, along with the Pacetti men’s skills as hunting and fishing guides and Martha Pacetti’s artistry in the kitchen, drew many tourists and made the Pacetti Hotel famous. To pay for his room and board, William Aiken Walker worked as the hotel’s desk clerk and also painted pictures to sell featuring the local landscape or portraits of the fish caught by guests.
Fish painting done by Walker
Walker made many friends during his sojourns at the hotel. Among them were James N. Gamble, son of one of Procter and Gamble’s founders, and Dr. C. Lewis Diehl, a pharmacist and first president of the Louisville College of Pharmacy. He was also close to William Henry Gregg, a wealthy St. Louis industrialist who was retired and devoted himself to travel, fishing, and socializing. Gregg spent weeks at a time fishing on his yacht, and he eventually authored the 1902 classic Where, When, and How to Catch Fish on the East Coast of Florida. Although not credited, Walker did many of the fish illustrations in the book.
Walker (center), with Gomez Pacetti (L) and Dr. Lewis Diehl (R) at the Pacetti Hotel, c1907
After the death of Bartola Pacetti in 1898, management of the hotel was taken over by Bartola’s son Gomez. Gomez decided to increase Walker’s weekly board from $10 to $12, and this deeply offended the artist since he had worked for the family for so many years and had gifted them a number of his paintings. Walker stopped his annual visits for a time, but eventually his friendship with Martha Pacetti won out, and he returned to his winter visits and desk clerk duties.
In 1904, Walker mysteriously lost his hearing. He counted this as a blessing when Martha Pacetti purchased a piano for her granddaughter Nettie. Walker, himself an accomplished pianist, was not eager to listen to a novice practicing. His hearing mysteriously returned in 1908, so he could once again enjoy his own playing and singing despite any sounds that were being produced by Miss Nettie Pacetti.
The artist made his last visit to the hotel in 1919. Martha Pacetti had died two years earlier, the hotel was beginning to decline, and his own health was failing. He died on January 3, 1921, in Charleston at the home of his nephew. Walker is buried in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery.
