Walter Withers (1854-1914), painter, interior designer and teacher, trained at the Royal Academy in London before coming to Australia at the end of 1882. Having humped his swag around Victoria, absorbing the details of the landscape, he worked as a draughtsman in Melbourne before returning to London to marry, and proceeding to Paris to undertake further art classes at the Académie Julian. After some years abroad, he returned to Melbourne in 1889, soon joining Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and others at their camp at Eaglemont, near Heidelberg. In 1890 he established an artists' enclave at Charterisville, Heidelberg, where he painted and taught. The following year he opened an atelier in the city; later he moved to Creswick, where his pupils included Percy and Norman Lindsay; he was to return to Heidelberg before settling permanently at Eltham in 1902. At various periods he was a trustee of the NGV and the president of the Victorian Artists' Society; he was a founding member of the Australian Art Association. A key member of the Heidelberg School, many of whose members had nicknames ('Smike', 'Bulldog', 'The Prof' - he was 'The Colonel'), Withers is represented in most major Australian galleries, as well as the large regional galleries of Victoria. The Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum held a retrospective of his work, Walter Withers 1854-1914: 150 Years in 2004.
