Walter Inglis Anderson (September 29, 1903 – November 30, 1965) was an American painter and writer. Anderson died from cancer November 30, 1965, at the age of 62. Early life and education Anderson was born in New Orleans to George Walter Anderson, a grain broker, and Annette McConnell Anderson, a prominent New Orleans family member who had studied art at Newcomb College. He was the second of three brothers, the eldest being Peter Anderson and the youngest James McConnell "Mac" Anderson. As a child, Anderson attended St. John’s School in Manilus, New York until his schooling was interrupted at age 14 by World War I. He then transferred to the Manual Training School in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1922 he enrolled at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons School of Design). After a year at Parsons, he won a scholarship to study at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Here (1924–1928) he would study under iconoclastic modernists like Henry McCarter, Hugh Breckenridge, and Arthur Carles, winning a Packard Award for his animal drawing and a Cresson Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him to spend a summer in France. While in France, Anderson was particularly impressed with cave paintings, which noticeably influenced his drawing style. Ocean Springs Anderson's older brother Peter opened the Shearwater Pottery Factory in Ocean Springs, Mississippi in 1928, on a 24-acre parcel of property his parents had purchased in 1918. Anderson moved to Ocean Springs after his years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and worked as a designer in the family business, Shearwater Pottery. In 1928-29 he designed his earliest ceramic pieces: pelican and crab bookends, lampstands, peculiar "Resting" and "Sitting Geometric Cat"; a "Horse and Rider" and innumerable plates and vases. His work as a designer and decorator at Shearwater Pottery from 1928 until his death, included incised pieces, sgraffito work, underglaze decoration, woodcarvings of saints, and designs for furniture. Among his early projects, launched with his younger brother James ("Mac"), was a "Shearwater Pottery Annex" which produced inexpensive figurines, giving Anderson enough of an income in 1932 to marry Agnes Grinstead an art history graduate of Radcliffe College, who would later write a poignant memoir of their life together (Approaching the Magic Hour). During the early years, manufacturing of the figurines, which he called "widgets", prevented Anderson from painting and led to considerable tension. In 1934, commissioned