Portrait painter, printmaker, and illustrator Walter Tittle was born in Springfield, Ohio, on October 9, 1883. He moved to New York City in 1905 to study at Robert Henri's New York School of Art alongside George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Vachel Lindsey, and Edward Hopper, with whom Tittle would share a studio space on Washington Square. Among his most significant mentors was William Merritt Chase. 

Most noted for his worked as an illustrator, he was a regular contributor to The Century, Scribner's, London Strand, and Life magazines, among others. In 1921 he was commissioned to create portraits of twenty-five leading international participants of the Limitation of Armaments Conference in Washington, D.C. He also created portraits of leading actors, writers, and other luminaries of America and Britain. Though he was known first and foremost as a portraitist, his etchings of cityscapes and nightlife in 1920s New York are among the most significant of their time. 

Tittle lived in England and France for most of the 1920s and '30s with his wife, Helen. They returned first to Danville, Connecticut before settling in Monterey, California, in 1964. Tittle was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, London; the Society of American Etchers; the Chicago Society of Etchers; and the Print Maker's Society of California (now the California Society of Printmakers). Walter Tittle died on March 27, 1966.

Collections: 
National Portrait Gallery, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and many others.