Sir William Russell Flint Page

Born in Edinburgh on the 4th April 1880, the son of
Francis Wighton Flint, a water colour artist and
designer, Russell Flint certainly had the background
for an artistic career. After Daniel Stewart's College,
he entered the Royal Institution School of Art in
Edinburgh where he learned the ground rules of line
and colour which he was to develop into his own
distinctive style. However, it was a six year
apprenticeship as a draughtsman at a large printing
works in Edinburgh which gave him the necessary
discipline required of all great artists.

In 1903 Russell Flint was taken on to the staff of the
Illustrated London News as an artist illustrator. In
that era before the photograph had entirely ousted
drawing and engraving from the pages of newspapers
and magazines, the artist was disciplined by the
confines of time and editorial in a manner which has
since vanished. The fact that the Illustrated London
News was a journal distributed throughout the British
Empire, took Flint's name around the world, laying a
foundation for the international status he later
enjoyed as a water colour artist.

Philip Lee Warner, publisher, for whom Flint had
already decorated an edition of Thomas Ă Kempis,
was soon to form the Medici Society. He
commissioned drawings for the publication of 'The
Song of Soloman', which was eventually published
in 1909. From then until the outbreak of World War I,
Russell Flint illustrated a number of classical limited
editions including Mallory's "Morte D'Arthur",
Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and Homer's
"Odyssey".

The War took Flint into uniform, first in the R.N.V.R.
as a lieutenant attached to the Royal Navy Air Service.
By 1918 he had become "Admiralty Assistant
Overseer - Airships" and returned to Scotland. He
was in fact based at an Airship Station on the Clyde
where he was able to commute to Glasgow and renew
acquaintances at the School of Art.

After leaving the Service, Flint travelled to France and
Spain and began to draw and paint the landscapes and
small towns of the rural regions of those countries. By
1924 he was elected Associate of the Royal Academy
and became a full member nine years later. During this
period, and up until the outbreak of the Second World
War, Flint's style became more free with an increasing
emphasis on water colour which, under his brush,
could represent the softness of a silk cushion or the
rugged texture of a town building.

In 1936 he became President of the Royal Society of
Painters in Watercolour.

During the war, Flint and his wife lived for a time on a
turkey farm in Devon. Although he had no official
standing as a war artist, his connection with Naval
"top brass" allowed him access to Devonport
Dockyard, where he painted as and when he liked.
One of those subjects "H.M.S. Javelin - Devonport
1941" now hangs in the National Maritime Museum
at Greenwich.

By the end of the war, Flint was back in London living
at Peel Cottage, Camden Hill. A short period of
portraiture, mostly of friends like Richard Colman and
W. Craig Henderson, led into what must be described
as Flint's mature period.

Those lovely watercolour paintings of arrogant peasant
girls all stem from his post war period. His beautiful
reclining models became a Russell Flint hallmark. This
was that unique time in an artist's career when the
subject matter and the medium fuse together under the
artist's brush to form a style that is at once unique and
captivating.

William Russell Flint was knighted in 1947 and painted
until his death at the age of 89. His career was long
and distinguished - his painting has given immense
pleasure to people across the world and through
limited editions has reached an even wider public.

'Variation II' Copyright Š Sir William Russell Flint Galleries Ltd SOLD	'Janelle with Volume' Size: 14" x 20" Copyright Š Sir William Russell Flint Galleries Ltd SOLD

'Rocco Aphrodite' Size: 16" x 26" Copyright Š Sir William Russell Flint Galleries Ltd SOLD