Walter Frederick Osborne[1] (17 June 1859 – 24 April 1903) was an Irish impressionist and Post-Impressionism landscape and portrait painter, best known for his documentary depictions of late 19th century working class life.

Most of his paintings are figurative and focus on women, children, the elderly, the poor, and the day-to-day life of ordinary people on Dublin streets, as well as series of rural scenes.

Osborne's talent was evident as a young man and he traveled widely in his youth; studying at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp.

[4] Walter learned from his father that there was money to be earned from painting animals, and he produced quite a few; including of children with their pets, notably his 1885 A New Arrival, and a series of impressionistic works on cows.

[5] He won the Taylor Prize in 1881 and 1882,[6] the highest student honour in Ireland of the time, while studying at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp.

[7] In 1883, Osborne moved from Antwerp to Brittany where he painted his famous Apple Gathering, Quimperlé, now in the National Gallery of Ireland.

During his period he often returned to Dublin to make preparatory sketches for what became his most renowned series, of the everyday lives of the city's poor.

His final work Tea in the Garden, a fusion of naturalism and impressionism, remained unfinished at his death and is now in the collection of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in Dublin.