Walter Armiger Bowring (11 March 1874 – 3 November 1931) was a New Zealand portrait and landscape painter, illustrator, cartoonist and caricaturist, also successful in London and Australia.

[1][2] He was an unofficial World War I artist and a collection of his early work is contained in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

[10][11] In December 1899, some of his work was reproduced in the New Zealand Illustrated magazine and in 1905 he went to London and studied under William Orpen and Augustus John.

Works by Bowring featured in an exhibition of World War I and II paintings by New Zealand artists compiled by the National Art Gallery, Wellington in 1952.

[11] Walter Bowring was vice-president of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts for eight years, resigning in 1925, when he moved to Sydney with his second wife, and fellow artist, Violet Nelson.

Fourteen of Bowring's portraits were entered in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Archibald Prize between 1925 and 1931.