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Born in Portland, Maine, Walter Griffin became one of the better known landscape painters in Connecticut in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
His father was a carver of ship figureheads, and Walter grew up with exposure to art through his father's artist friends. At age sixteen, he began five years of study at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts school, and then went to New York where he studied at the Art Students League, and in 1882 enrolled in the National Academy of Design in New York. There he associated with William Merritt Chase, Willard Metcalf, and Emil Carlsen.
In 1887, he went to France for a ten-year period and studied at the Academie Colarossi and the Ecole des Beaux Arts with Jean Paul Laurens and exhibited at the 1889 Paris Salon. He also painted at the village of Barbizon with Francois Millet. By 1898, he was in Hartford, Connecticut where he set up a studio and taught at a local art school. He also founded and taught at an art school in Quebec between 1897 and 1899.
In 1889, he married Lillian Baynes, an associate from his art school teaching. Much of his landscape painting was in the environs of Farmington, Connecticut, which he called the "Barbizon of America" because of its bucolic charms. In 1903, he began painting in Old Lyme, and the artists there, especially Childe Hassam, influenced him to a brighter, more colorful palette. He became so intrigued with landscape painting that he gave up teaching.
However, by 1908, he became itinerant because his marriage was unhappy He moved around between Europe, especially France, and other parts of New England including Portland, Maine. In 1922, he was elected to the National Academy. After his death in 1935, the Academy held a joint memorial exhibition of his work and that of his close friend, Child Hassam. However, his work was largely forgotten until the mid 1970s because his sister had stored away his paintings. The Vose Galleries of Boston played a major part in exposing his painting to the public.