Walter Dubois Richards is best known for his lithographs of the 1930s and 1940s, primarily classical, realist images of the Amer can scene. Born in Penfield, Ohio, he was raised in Rocky River, just west of Cleveland. He studied with Henry Keller, Paul Travis, and Carl Gaertner at the Cleveland School of Art, graduating in 1930. He accepted a commercial art job with the Sundblom Art Group in Chi go in 1930. In 1931 he returned to Cleveland and worked at Tranquillini Advertising Art Studios, where he met Stevan Dohanos, who became a lifelong colleague and friend. In 1932 Richards and Dohanos spent a summer in Eastport, Maine, at the George Pearce Ennis School, where they studied lithography with Stow Wengenroth. In 1936 Richards joined Dohanos in New York City, where they worked together again in the Charles E. Cooper Studios. Practicing free-lance work exclusively, Richards moved to Connecticut. He has done commercial work for companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Campbell’s Soup, Chrysler, General Electric, and Standard Oil. He designed more than 40 commemorative postage stamps and illustrated several books. He also served as the official history painter for the U.S. Air Force, traveling to Vietnam in the mid-1960s. His illustrations have appeared in Reader’s Digest, Colliers, American Legion, Life, Look, and Fortune magazines. He has exhibited his works in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1930s) as well as in exhibitions in New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. He was a director of the Cleveland Print Makers. In 1950 he established the Fairfield Watercolor Group, an organization of artists and illustrators who met regularly to practice and discuss the fine arts.
Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 235