Frank Algernon Stewart (1877-1945) - British artist

 

With thanks to Ognyan Hristov for discovering this amazing artist who was also a war correspondent during the Boer War.

Frank was born in Croydon, UK on 16th October 1977.  His parents were Ebernezer Stewart, a seed crusher, and his wife, Mary Ann Stewarat, nee Betts.    Educated in Hastings, Frank studied art under George Ward in Rochester, Fred Brown at the Slade, and Frank Calderon at the School of Animal Painting. Frank became a war artist for “The Illustrated London News” and in October 1899 went to Africa where he saw action at Colenso, Spin Kop, Monti Christo and the releif of Ladysmith during the Second Boer War.

Invalided home, Frank went to Paris in 1901, to study at the Académie Julian with Rodolphe Julian.  In 1903, he married Eliza Jane Brown in Havant, Hampshire.  The couple lived in Croydon but Eliza Jane died in December 1905.   

Sketch by Frank of General Buller riding in to greet General White outside the Town Hall in Ladysmith - 28 February 1900   Sketched in situ by Frank Algernon Stewart, the official Boer War artist of the London Illustrated News who came to South Africa in October 1899.

The Surrey Yeomanry on the Struma Valley Front, Salonika 1917-1918. The Evening Wireless - Komarjan Bridge. By Frank Algernon Stewart .

During the First World War, Frank served in the King Edward's Horse, Norfolk Yeomanry. Frank was a keen huntsman and his work was predominantly of hunting scenes. In later life he was forced to give up hunting as the result of an operation, but he continued to follow the hounds on foot, making sketches of hounds running.

By 1939, Frank had re-married and he and his wife, Muriel Winifred, lived in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, where he died in June 1945. 

NOTE:  The Académie Julian was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 until 1968. The Academy remained famous for the number and quality of artists who attended during the great period of effervescence in the arts in the early twentieth century.  After 1968, the Academy integrated with ESAG Penninghen.

William Frank Calderon and Charles Edward Johnson, a landscape artist, started the School of Animal Painting at 54 Baker Street, London in April 1895 and Frank Calderon was the school’s Principal until 1916.