Walton and his artist friends formed a group known as the Glasgow Boys. They were inspired by developments in landscape painting in France and sought to explore the natural effects of light in the open air through painting Scottish rural subjects. Walton spent a year in Dusseldorf and studied at the Glasgow School of Art, but gained most experience working with his friends at Cockburnspath, Berwickshire and Cambuskenneth, Stirling. He specialised in landscapes and portraits. He settled with his family in Edinburgh in 1904 after a successful decade in London. Walton was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1905.
The Glasgow Boys were a loose group of young artists that represented the beginnings of modernism in Scottish painting. In the early 1880s, 'the boys’ were united by their disillusionment with traditional academic painting, with its strong focus on historical subjects and high levels of finish. Instead, they painted contemporary rural subjects, often working out of doors and painting directly onto the canvas.