Stock # A2908 - Limited Edition Print
"I'se Covered De Roof"
by William Aiken Walker
Number 782 of 4000
From an original oil painting by William Aiken Walker
Print, matting and glass are all in excellent condition.
Solid wood frame shows some wear.
Frame is approximately 13.5" high x 17.5" wide
Print is approximately 12.0" high x 8.0" wide
About the Artist - William Aiken Walker
William Aiken Walker (March 11, 1839 – January 3, 1921) was an American artist best
known for genre paintings
of black 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 1842, when his father died,
Walker's mother moved the family to Baltimore, Maryland, where they remained until returning to Charleston in 1848.
In 1861, during the American Civil War, Walker enlisted in the Confederate army and
served under General Wade Hampton in Hampton's Legion.
He was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines (1862).
After recuperating, he was transferred back to Charleston, where he was assigned picket duty,
which gave him time to paint. For the next two years, he made maps and drawings of Charleston's defenses.
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.
Two of his paintings were reproduced by Currier and Ives as chromolithographs.
Walker continued painting until his death on January 3, 1921 in Charleston,
where he is buried in the family plot at Magnolia Cemetery.
Please see all photographs.