Unusual William Aiken Walker (American, 1838-1921) Cotton Pickers Triptych

William Aiken Walker was an American artist best known for genre paintings of African-American sharecroppers. He also documented the American Civil War era during his service in the Confederate Army. Walker was born to an Irish Protestant father and a mother of South Carolina background in Charleston, South Carolina in 1839. In 1861, during the American Civil War, Walker was conscripted in the Confederate Army and was sent to Morris Island as part of the Palmetto Guard. He was separated from the military at the end of 1864. After the Civil War, Walker moved to Baltimore, where he produced small paintings of the "Old South" to sell as tourist souvenirs. He is best known for his paintings depicting the lives of poor black emancipated slaves, especially sharecroppers in the post-Reconstruction American South. Walker continued painting until his death on January 3, 1921, in Charleston, where he is buried in the family plot at Magnolia Cemetery.