Born in Rome, Ohio, David Walkley became a New England landscape and marine painter and was also a teacher in Pennsylvania and New York.

He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1867 to 1871 and at the Julian Academy in Paris with Boulanger and Lefebvre. In New York he was at the Art Students League and painted with William Merritt Chase, and he was a member of the Salmagundi Club in New York City.

In 1902, he moved to Mystic, Connecticut from New London and helped found the Mystic Art Association. He also painted at Old Lyme, Connecticut. From 1879 to 1884, he was a teacher at the Pittsburgh School of Design and later taught at the Art Students League in New York.

*Walkley visited Southern Arizona in the 1930's. A painting by the artist is in the possession of Wayne Kielsmeier with a title that puts it in Pima County, AZ and it is dated 1932.

Walkley died in 1934, and is buried in Union Cemetery, Rock Creek, Ohio.

*Updated with information from Wayne Kielsmeier on Dec. 22, 2023

Born in Rock Creek, Ohio, David Walkley was a descendant of early Connecticut settlers for whom Walkley Hill is named. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1867 to 1871. He briefly had a studio in Philadelphia, but in the early 1870s he moved to Cleveland, keeping a studio there for six years.

In 1878 he went to study in Paris at the Academie Mosler and the Academie Julian, where he studied with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre. After returning to the United States, he taught at the Pittsburgh School of Design. Following his marriage in 1884 to his student May Remington, Walkley settled in New York, where he studied at the Art Students' League with William Merritt Chase.

He was a member of the Salmagundi Club, the Society of American Artists and the Pittsburgh Art Association. He exhibited at the National Academy, the Philadelphia Art Club, the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as at independent shows in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.

From 1879 to 1884 he taught at the Pittsburgh School of Design, and in the later 1880s he became a teacher at the Art Students' League. At the turn of the century, Walkley looked in Connecticut for a suitable environment in which both to paint and raise a family. After spending brief periods in Cos Cob and Falls Village, Connecticut and in Port Chester, New York, Walkley moved to New London, Connecticut.

Many of Walkley's paintings feature his daughters as models. While his growing family remained in Connecticut, Walkley continued to travel frequently to Europe to paint. In 1902, he moved to Mystic, where he helped found the Mystic Art Association, joining fellow painters Henry Ward Ranger, J. Eliot Enneking, and Charles Davis. He also painted in Stonington, Noank, and on Mason's Island.

By 1926 he had returned to his native town of Rock Creek, Ohio, where he died in 1934.