Lionel Walden

United States·1861-1933

Lionel Walden was an American painter known chiefly for luminous marine and coastal scenes, working between Paris, Cornwall, and Hawaii. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, he trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran and built his early reputation there, earning medals at the Paris Salon and later the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honor. In the 1890s he settled for a time in Falmouth, England, painting the harbours and skies of Cornwall and Wales, including views of Cardiff now held in museums in Cardiff, Paris, and elsewhere. From 1911 he made repeated visits to Hawaii, where his dramatic seascapes and volcanic subjects led one historian to call him the finest seascape painter to work on the islands. His paintings are held today by the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, National Museum Cardiff, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. He died in Chantilly, France, in 1933.