Cecilia Beaux admiringly commented that Walter’s beach scenes “seemed as if they were blown onto the canvas.” Walter represents a rain shower at the beach with a dance of pastel colors on canvas. Women and children chat and play in the sand while other figures wade into the water in the distance. Vertical brushstrokes suggest rain falling from the darkened clouds. Amid the windy atmosphere, all bonnets remain confidently on the heads of little girls and their mothers. Layered thin gray and white brushstrokes create a sense of dense, thick air among the beachgoers.
Born in Alberta, Canada, Walter grew up in Philadelphia and attended the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (later the University of the Arts) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She took lessons with William Merritt Chase, with whom she developed a close professional relationship, teaching at the Chase School (now Parsons School of Design). Well-traveled, she studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Pairs, where she subsequently set up her own studio with a group of other young American women artists.
