Walter Ronald Locke was an etcher best known for his landscapes. He resided in Florida and many of his surviving works are of Florida scenes, although he also made prints of places elsewhere in the United States. Locke was born in Winchester, Massachusetts, and studied art under Louis Kronbert and Alfred Hutty. During his lifetime, he exhibited at the Library of Congress and Society of American Etchers.

He was also affiliated with Associated American Artists, an organization founded to produce and market fine art prints nationwide. The latter marketed his prints with a biography that noted "[h]is works are often the results of months of study, and of an almost impossible amount of long hard work, so that every least bit of foliage may be accurate and detailed." His works are in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Carnegie Museums, Pittsburgh; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown; and the Yale University Art Gallery.