Ralph Trafford Walker

Service Number: NX191297; Corporal

Description

Ralph Trafford Walker was born in Sydney on January 7, 1912. His father was a Methodist minister and the family lived in various rural areas of NSW and Queensland. He was the youngest of five boys and was largely self-educated. Walker left school at age 15 and demonstrated a great talent and interest in drawing. In 1932 at age 20 he attended Central Technical College in Brisbane for one year and then returned to Sydney to attend the National Art School, where he specialised in sculpture and was taught by Raynor Hoff. During this time he also attended classes at the Royal Art Society School where he was taught by Dattilo Rubbo and Sydney Long. From 1937 to 1941 he studied drawing and painting under Henry Gibbons at the Julian Ashton Art School. On 1 October 1941 he enlisted in the army as an acting sergeant with the Military History Section serving as a camouflage instructor. The same year he was commissioned to do 16 bronze panels for the doors of the Mitchell Library in Sydney depicting Aboriginal peoples. Three years later in 1944 he was appointed an Official War Artist, and was deployed to the South Western Pacific, primarily to collect ideas for the three dioramas he completed after the war (Weewak, Artillery Hill, Bougainville 1944 and Bacon Hill New Britain 1945). He also completed eight drawings and eight sculptures as part of the commission. The appointment ended in 1947 the same year that he married artist and teacher Edith Jean Brown.

During the 1960s he was employed at the Australian Broadcasting Commission designing visual material and was employed there for 10 years. In the 1970s Walker developed a series of drawings and paintings relating to his convict ancestry and in 1992 he received a grant from the Australia Council for the development of a film focused on these works titled ‘The Days of the Redcoats’. Walker died in Sydney aged 91 in 2003.