Phillips, Walter J., 1884-1963 : Walter Joseph Phillips (1884-1963), was born at Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, England, the son of Sophia Blackett and Reverend John Phillips, a Methodist minister. His encouragement to study art came from his mother as his father did not approve of this uncertain vocation for his son. Following the Phillips' move to Barton-on-Trent, Walter attended evening classes at the local art school where the headmaster took a personal interest in developing his talent. Next he attended Bourne College (1899-1902), a boarding school near Birmingham, where he was active in sports and won a scholarship in mathematics which he promptly spent on fees to attend the Birmingham School of Art once a week under the instruction of Edward R. Taylor. Taylor did much to help him to further develop his art and he won first prize in drawing two years in a row at the examination of the College of Preceptors.
Phillips then became an usher at Yarmouth College where for a year he taught Latin and arithmetic. With money earned from teaching, Phillips travelled to South Africa in an attempt to earn money to study art in Paris. There he worked as a surveyor's assistant, a travelling salesman, a lawyer's clerk and a diamond digger, but he failed to make enough money to study art in Paris. He returned to England with little more money than he had at the outset. After a short stint as a commercial artist, Phillips became Art Master at Bishop Woodsworth School, Salisbury, England (1908-1911). There he met and learned techniques from Ernest Carlos who had studied at the Royal Academy School. During this period, Phillips had the opportunity to do landscape painting in watercolours in the neighbouring countrysides, on the Scilly Islands, and in Cornwall and Yorkshire, accompanied by Ernest Carlos while on their summer holidays. On one of these outings, Phillips met Gladys Pitcher and they were married on December 26, 1910.
In November 1911, Phillips held his first solo show in Salisbury which proved a success both in sales and acceptance of his work. The following year, a painting he had done in Newlyn, Corwall, was accepted for exhibit at the Royal Academy. Feeling restless and thinking of seeking fresh horizons, Phillips and his wife Gladys decided to emigrate to Winnipeg, Canada, simply because it was situated goegraphically in the centre of the country. They arrived in June, 1913. In Winnipeg he became Art Master at St. John's Technical High School. His teaching job sustained his family financially while weekend trips into the rural areas outside Winnipeg resulted in his watercolours for which there was a good market. Shortly after his arrival in Winnipeg Phillips met Cyril Barraud who taught him how to etch. Barraud sold his tools and press to Phillips before leaving Winnipeg for service overseas during World War I.
Phillips mastered the art of etching in a remarkably short time. He was more interested however in producing his work in colour. After experimenting with various techniques and tools, Phillips was able to translate his watercolours into colour woodcuts. In 1919 six of his woodcut prints were reproduced in "The International Studio" with considerable praise for his work in an accompanying article. Phillips then experimented with different types of wood to see what effects could be achieved from the grain of each wood. During the summers of 1917 and 1919, Phillips lectured at the University of Wisconsin while his work was being admired nationally and internationally.
From Winnipeg he moved his family briefly to Muskoka, Ontario, then to England for ten months where Phillips studied the colour techniques of the print makers William Giles, Sydney Lee, Allen W. Seaby, Y. Urushibara and Martin Hardie. Phillips and his family returned to Winnipeg in June 1925 at which point Phillips entered a great period of artistic productivity while his book "The Techniques of the Colour Woodcut" was published in 1926 in New York. In 1940 Phillips became a staff member of the Banff Summer School of Fine Arts and in 1941 moved his family to Calgary to take up his new position as instructor at the Institute of Technology and Art, a position he held until 1949.
By 1958 Walter Phillips' eyesight began failing and in 1960 he retired to Victoria. Walter Joseph Phillips died in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1963, at the age of seventy-eight.
