Walter Langley was born in Birmingham, the eighth of eleven children of William Langley, a tailor, and his wife, Mary Ann. He was enrolled at the age of ten in evening classes at the Birmingham School of Design. He was apprenticed to a lithographer, August Heinrich Biermann and through lithography was introduced to the use of watercolour. Attracted to the medium, he set about learning to paint. In 1880, Langley visited Newlyn briefly and in the following year spent periods in both Brittany and Newlyn. He settled in Newlyn in 1882, one of the first artists to arrive there. Apart from a return to Birmingham in 1866–1887 and brief excursions to the continent, Langley remained for the rest of his life in Cornwall. He was honoured in 1886 by an exhibition of watercolours at the new Art Gallery in Birmingham and received international recognition through the award of a gold medal for watercolours at the Paris Exhibition of 1889.