Walter was born in
Jelgava, south of
Riga in the family of a latvian merchant Teodors Valters. He had German citizenship through his
Baltic German mother Catharina Kurau. He studied art at the
Imperial Academy of Arts in
St. Petersburg with
Janis Rozentāls and
Vilhelms Purvītis, and built up an oeuvre that ranged from the academic realism of the 1890s, through a style inspired by
Impressionism and
Expressionism, to the verge of
abstraction with a peculiar non-objective vision of nature late in his career. At the turn of the 20th century Walter stood out as one of the most important emerging artists in Latvia, but left in 1906 to work in
Dresden, where he changed his last name to Walter-Kurau. He lived in Dresden for 10 years before moving to Berlin in 1916 or 1917. More than 120 of his works are in the collection of
Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga, including his most famous work from the pre-Germany era,
Bathing Boys (1900). He is included in Latvian cultural canon. He died in
Berlin in 1932. == Gallery ==