Early Life
Born in Mobile, Alabama, Walker was first encouraged to become an artist by an elementary school teacher, Mayme Simpson.
Forced at an early age to become the family breadwinner, Walker worked from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily for the Mobile & Ohio Freight Department, limiting his sleep so that he could devote more waking hours to the study of drawing and painting.
He began his studies under Edmund C. DeCelle (misspelled in his letter as Cecile) of Mobile.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)