Walter Biggs

FINTEL LIBRARY GUIDE WALTER BIGGS 1886 - 1968

He made "an art of ordinary things." Roanoke World News "Has any artist before ever painted snow like Walter Biggs?" Priscilla Young, Roanoke art critic Norman Kent, editor of American Artist magazine called Biggs one of the "deans of American illustration"

Born in Elliston, Virginia

Attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute and then the prestigious New York School of Art (the Chase School)

Roomed with George Bellows, studied with Edward Penfield, Lucius Hitchcock and Robert Henri, and is associated with the Ashcan School of painting

Taught for a number of years at the Art Students League and the Grand Central School of Art. His illustrations appeared in many well known magazines including Harper's, Scribner's, The Century, Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Cosmopolitan

Won many awards including Shaw Prize, the Auction Prize, the Mischa Lempert Memorial Purchase Prize, and the Herman Wick Prize all from the Salmagundi Club; Gold and Silver Medals of Honor from the American Watercolor Society; Adolph and Clara Obrig Prize from the national Academy of Design; and the Artists' Fellowship honored him for "exceptional artistic merit"

Elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1963