He was born George Walter Williams on 29 November 1834 in London, being the son of the well-known Victorian landscape painter George Augustus Williams and his wife Caroline Smith. Some sources attribute to him a twin brother named George. However, as his baptismal record proves, George and Walter are the same person. He became a painter like his father, and married another painter Jane Pearcy (1832-1872), with whom he had two children - Florence Ada Williams (1859-1927) and Cyril Stanley Williams (b. 1863) - both of whom became painters as well, but neither of whom achieved any measurable degree of success as artists. Walter remarried two more times, after the deaths of each of his previous wives.Reynolds (1975), p. 37-38.
