George Henry Walton

Who was George Henry Walton?

George Henry Walton, was a noted Scottish architect and designer of remarkable diversity. George was the youngest of twelve talented children of Jackson Walton, a Manchester commission agent and himself an accomplished painter and photographer, by his second wife, the Aberdeen-born Quaker Eliza Ann Nicholson. George was a brother of the painter Edward Arthur Walton of the Glasgow School.

His father's death in 1873 left the family in straitened circumstances, and at the age of thirteen George started work as a clerk with the British Linen Bank. With a view to a different career, he attended art classes in the evenings at the Glasgow School of Art and with Peter McGregor Wilson at the short-lived Glasgow Atelier of Fine Arts. When he was commissioned to redesign one of Miss Cranston's tea rooms at 114 Argyle Street in Glasgow, Walton started his own decorating company, George Walton & Co, Ecclesiastical and House Decorators, in 1888 at 152 Wellington Street. He was greatly influenced by both James Whistler and William Morris and his work ventured into almost every avenue of decorative art, helping to pioneer the distinctive Glasgow Style.