Moonrise, Ramsgate

Francis Job “Frank” Short was a British artist, printmaker and teacher of printmaking. Born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, he was educated to be a civil engineer and in 1883 became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In that same year he entered the South Kensington School of Art and also worked at the life classes of Professor Fred Brown at the Westminster School of Art. He became a print maker and was largely responsible for reviving the practices of mezzotint and aquatint engraving. Praised and encouraged by Ruskin and a great admirer of Turner, his etchings and mezzotints from Turner’s Liber Studiorum were among his earlier successes. He also reproduced in fine and sensitive mezzotints several pictures by George Frederick Watts, David Cox and Peter de Wint. He became head of the Engraving School at the Royal College of Art and was elected to the Roya Society of Painter-Etchers ad Engravers in 1885. In 1910 he succeeded Sir Seymour Haden as president. His work as a watercolour painter was recognized in 1917 when he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. He lived in Brook Green, London.