Walter Inglis Anderson

Who was Walter Inglis Anderson?

Walter Inglis Anderson was an American painter, writer, and naturalist. Known to his family as "Bob", he was born in New Orleans to George Walter Anderson, a grain broker, and Annette McConnell Anderson, member of a prominent New Orleans family, who had studied art at Newcomb College, where she had absorbed the ideals of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Anderson was the second of three brothers, the eldest being Peter Anderson and the youngest was James McConnell "Mac" Anderson. The two older brothers attended St. John's School in Manlius, New York until their schooling was interrupted by World War I and they enrolled in the prestigious Isidore Newman School in New Orleans.

In 1918, the Andersons purchased a large wooded tract of coastal land in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It was Annette's, and her husband's, firm intention that all three of her sons become artists, that they learn to make a living from it. By 1924, a year after the family moved to Ocean Springs, Peter was experimenting with pottery, and in 1928, after training with Edmund deForest Curtis at the Conestoga Pottery and with Charles F. Binns at the School of Clay-Working and Ceramics at Alfred, New York, the Andersons opened a family business, Shearwater Pottery, which is still in operation in Ocean Springs.