Frank Short (British, 1857-1945)
‘Strand Gate, Winchelsea’
etching
(impression) 7 ¼” high x 12 ½” wide
(framed) 16 ½” high x 20 ½” wide
Description: A fine original British School etching titled, “Strand Gate, Winchelsea”, by listed artist Frank Short (1857-1945), c. 1908. A parallel example of this etching can be found in the Short Catalogue Raisonné (H347); National Gallery of Art (1946393242); the National Gallery of Victoria (1383.236C-5); among others.
Notes: Depicted is a view of the Strand Gate from the town side, a woman is walking up the roadway and two men are leaning along the stone wall and inspecting the view to Rye, once the road to the port. The building in the center of the marsh is likely the ruins of Camber Castle, erected for coastal defence by Henry VIII and situated half way to Rye. The Strand gate itself was built in the 14th Century to fortify defences from the French.
Markings: signed lower left, “Frank Short”; titled on tag verso, “Strand Gate, Winchelsea”; “FS” monograms lower right; framing label verso, “Frank Haines, Toronto”
Condition: Very Good Condition – frame, glazed and ready for display.
For Accuracy Only: there is some acid burn in the margins from the early mat and some faint foxing; the cream tone paper has been laid on card during an early framing as was common during the period.
Artist/Maker Biography: Sir Francis Job “Frank” Short RA (19 June 1857 – 22 April 1945) was a British printmaker and teacher of printmaking. He revived the practices of mezzotint and aquatint engraving, and also wrote about printmaking to educate a wider public. Born on 19 June 1857, at Stourbridge, Worcestershire. He was educated to be a civil engineer.
He was engaged on various works in the Midlands until 1881, when he came to London as assistant to Baldwin Latham in connection with the Parliamentary Inquiry into the pollution of the river Thames. In 1883 he was elected an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Having worked at the Stourbridge School of Art in his early years he joined the South Kensington School of Art, in 1883. He also worked at the life class under Professor Fred Brown at the Westminster School of Art, and for a short time at the Schools of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-colours.
His real life-work now became that of an original and translator engraver. He was a keen student of the works of JMW Turner; and his etchings and mezzotints from Turner’s Liber Studiorum (1885 seq.), examples of painstaking devotion and skill, were among his earliest successes, combining sympathetic study of the originals with a full knowledge of the resources of engraving and unwearied patience. Short received praise, constant advice and encouragement from Ruskin, and the co-operation of students of Turner such as William George Rawlinson and the Revd. Stopford Augustus Brooke.
A blue plaque marks Short’s former home at 56 Brook Green, Brook Green, Hammersmith, London.
As head of the Engraving School at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, Short had great influence on younger engravers, including Eli Marsden Wilson. He was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1885, and took a prominent part in conducting its affairs. In 1910 he succeeded Sir Seymour Haden as president.
Short received, among other distinctions, the gold medal for engraving at the Paris International Exhibition, 1889, and another gold medal (Rappel) 1900. In 1906 Short was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, when membership as Associate Engraver was revived; and in 1911 he was elected a full Royal Academician, and also received a knighthood. His work as a watercolourist was recognized in 1917 when he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.
