The Tile Club: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting The Tile Club | Page 94

Walter Paris
American, b. England, 1842–1906
One of the founding members of the Tile Club was the English-
man Walter Paris, an architect turned painter. Born in London in
1842, Paris served as an apprentice to Benjamin Ferrey in 1858.
He entered formal training at the Royal Academy a year later
where he studied under Thomas Charles Leeson Rowbotham,
Paul Naftel, and Joseph Nash. In 1862, he became an associate
of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the following
year he began working in India for the British Crown, first as an
assistant and then in 1865 as a government architect. While here,
Paris, along with architect James Trubshaw, designed the Goth-
ic-style General Post Office (now the Central Telegraph Office),
one of the structures for which he is perhaps best remembered.
Paris also worked at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art in
Bombay (now Mumbai).
Around 1872, Paris immigrated to the United States, open-
ing a painting studio in New York City at 3 Union Square—the
famed location of the Tile Club’s organization. He then moved to
Washington, D.C., but soon joined Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden
and the U.S. Geological Survey from 1874–1875, sketching
Instantaneous Photo. Co., Walter Paris, 1883, photographic
print, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division,
gift of Mrs. Eva Ingersoll Wakefield, January 24, 1947, LC-
USZ62-138983
REFERENCES:
“American Art in the Custom House.” Photographic Times and
American Photographer (May 29, 1885): 290.
the Colorado Territory. He returned to D.C., but also spent Brodie, Antonia, and Mark Girouard. Directory of British Archi-
ample, he was appointed Professor of Landscape Drawing at the Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. Volume
prolonged periods in New York City and abroad. In 1887, for ex-
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in London. Now specializing
in watercolors, Paris exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy,
Grosvenor, and Dudley, and he was a member of the Washington
Water Color Club. The multi-talented Paris was also an amateur
violinist and a lifetime member of the Georgetown Orchestra.
tects, 1834-1914. Vol. 2: L–Z. London: Continuum, 2001.
VII, Mills–Platner. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1934.
Mehrotra, Rahul, and Sharada Dwivedi. The Bombay High
Court: The Story of the Building — 1878–2003. Mumbai:
Eminence Designs, Pvt Ltd, 2004.
Nygren, Edward J., and Linda Crocker Simmons. American
Masters: Works on Paper from the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhi-
bition Service and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1986.
88 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting