Philip Wilson Steer OM RA RWS

1860 - 1942

The most fêted landscape painter of the Edwardian period, Philip Wilson Steer's early paintings made on the Suffolk coast are, along with the work of Whistler and Sickert, perhaps the most significant British interpretation of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. As Professor of Painting at the Slade from 1893-1930, Steer influenced many British artists of the first half of the 20th century. Born in Birkenhead, the son of a portrait painter, Philip Wilson Steer attended the South Kensington Drawing Schools before being rejected by the Royal Academy Schools and going to study in Paris, first at the Académie Julian, and then at the École des Beaux Arts. Here, the influence of Whistler and Manet, in particular, was to inform his work of the 1890s. A founding member of the New English Art Club, Steer came under the influence of 18th-century art, which influenced his figure painting to develop in a more conservative direction. However, rediscovering enabled a fresh approach to landscape painting, particularly in watercolour, that was to become his staple for half a century.