WILLIAM WALLS (1860-1942) 'Spinningdale'

William Walls was a landscape and animal painter born in Dunfermline and based in Edinburgh. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy and at the Antwerp Academie Royale des Beaux Arts, where his peers included E. A. Hornel and William Stewart MacGeorge. It was in Antwerp that he began making drawings and paintings of animals in the zoos there and in London at a time when animal painting was becoming popular in England. In 1892, Andrew Carnegie commissioned animal portraits from him. Walls later became a founder member of Edinburgh Zoo. Walls was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, 1914 and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, 1906 and became a well-known teacher at Edinburgh College of Art. Walls also served twice as judge for the Edinburgh Photographic Society Open Exhibition, in 1924 and 1937. A prolific artist, Walls showed over 200 works at the RSA, almost 100 at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts and 18 at the Royal Academy, London, as well as showing at the RHA, AAS and with Connell & Sons.