Frank Short

Short 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.

), 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 John Ruskin, and the co-operation of students of Turner such as William George Rawlinson and the Revd.

Several remarkable plates resulted from this study, bearing the simple lettering "F. Short, Sculp., after J. M. W. Turner, R.A.," which told little of the work expended on their production even before the copper was touched.

[citation needed] Short also translated into mezzotints several pictures of George Frederic Watts, "Orpheus and Eurydice," "Diana and Endymion," "Love and Death," "Hope," and the portrait of Lord Tennyson, all remarkable as faithful and imaginative renderings.

[5] Coastal landscapes, river estuaries, meadows and foreshores in Devon, Norfolk, Sussex, Cornwall and the north of England captivated him for his entire working life.

[3] In 1910 he succeeded Sir Francis Seymour Haden as its second president for 28 years, steering the society through the First World War and the end of the etching revival of the 1920s and its crash from 1929.

Short in 1914
Ebb Tide, Putney Bridge , mezzotint , 1885
Diana and Endymion, etching and mezzotint, printed in brown ink, 1891, after George Frederic Watts
Watercolour study, Sea and sky at Seaford
Blue plaque, 56 Brook Green