Thomas Dart Walker

1868-1914

American (Middlebury, Indiana)

Thomas Dart Walker attended schools in Goshen, Indiana, until age seventeen. In his youth he set off for Europe to study art. Once in Paris, he became a favorite pupil of William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), probably at the Académie Julian, where Bouguereau taught from 1875 onward.

Back in the States, in 1893 he was assignment to cover the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and his illustrations appeared in the Chicago magazine, The Graphic. Walker also worked for the publishing house of Harper and Brothers, creating illustrations for Harper's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and Harper's Young People. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he covered General Nelson A. Miles' campaign in Puerto Rico for Harper's Weekly. Perhaps his most famous picture appeared on the cover of Leslie's Weekly Illustrated on September 21, 1901. It depicted the assassination of President William McKinley two weeks earlier at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.