Artist

Walter Gay

born Hingham, MA 1856-died Breau, France 1937
Media - gay_walter.jpg - 90006
Image is courtesy of the Photographs of artists in their Paris studios, 1880-1890 in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Also known as
  • Walter J. Gay
Born
Hingham, Massachusetts, United States
Died
Breau, France
Active in
  • Paris, France
Biography

An expatriate who left Boston for Brittany, Gay began his career with genre scenes from eighteenth-century life, shifting in 1884 to the kind of realistic peasant picture seen in Novembre Étaples [SAAM, 1977.111]. He ultimately abandoned that subject matter as well, devoting himself in the last decades of his life to the elegant interiors that surrounded him in his château and in his Paris apartment.

Elizabeth Prelinger The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)

Works by this artist (4 items)

Walter Gay, Novembre, Etaples, ca. 1885, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1977.111
Novembre, Etaples
Dateca. 1885
oil on canvas
On view
Henry Wolf, Walter Gay, Charity, 1894, wood engraving on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1973.130.105
Charity
Artist
Date1894
wood engraving on paper
Not on view
Walter Gay, Untitled (Interior View), n.d., oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Harper Fletcher in memory of Mr. and Mrs. James Wolcott Wadsworth, 1971.283
Untitled (Interior View)
Daten.d.
oil on paperboard
Not on view
Walter Gay, Boudoir, Chateau de Chaalis, 1914, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Harper Fletcher in memory of Mr. and Mrs. James Wolcott Wadsworth, 1971.284
Boudoir, Chateau de Chaalis
Date1914
oil on paperboard
Not on view

Exhibitions

An artwork image of a woman
Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano 
October 8, 2021May 8, 2022
This exhibition brings to life the Venetian glass revival of the nineteenth century on the famed island of Murano and the artistic experimentation the city inspired for artists such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.