Born in Leeds and educated privately owing to ill-health. Trained first as an architect but then went to Paris and took up painting. He studied under Fred Brown then at the Royal College of Art. His first solo exhibition was at the Grafton Gallery 1911, then became a founder member of the Camden Town Group and a key figure of the London Group, serving as its treasurer. Well off, he travelled extensively in Europe and formed an important collection including Matisse, Bonnard, Vuillard, Dufy, Gilman, Matthew Smith, Gertler and his friend Sickert who stayed with him at his house in Bedford Square, Brighton from which they made sorties to Dieppe. Though in 1915 when because of the war, Dieppe was not accessible, Sickert visited him again and executed studies for his Brighton Pierrots, which ultimately achieved the record price of any painting by Sickert. The Leicester Galleries staged a memorial exhibition of Walter Taylor in 1944. His work is held in the Tate collections and at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.