Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969) was a Scottish artist and illustrator. In a lifetime spanning almost ninety years he enjoyed unprecedented success, excelling in a variety of media, including etching, drypoint, chalk, crayon, as well in painting in oil and tempera, but it was as a water-colourist that he is best remembered. Flint first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1906 and was awarded a silver medal at the Paris Salon of 1912 and elected a member of the Royal Society of Painters in Oil (ROI). In 1924, Flint was made an RA and in 1936 was elected president of Britain’s Royal Society of Painter’s in Watercolours. Flint was knighted in 1947.

William Russell Flint was born during 1880 in Edinburgh, he was the eldest son of Francis Wighton Flint, a commercial artist. Educated at Daniel Stewart College William left school at 14 and was apprenticed to a firm of lithographers in Edinburgh. He worked as a draughtsman and in 1895 began evening classes at the Royal Institution School of Art. Flint moved to London in 1900 where he was initially employed as a medical illustrator and subsequently by the Illustrated London News from 1903-07. In the evenings he studied at Heatherley’s School of Art - it was at the instigation of Thomas Heatherley that Flint devoted himself to watercolour.

During the First World War, Flint served as a lieutenant in the RNVR and later as a captain in the RAF. He was attached to the RNAS Airship section from 1916 to 1918 and was Admirably Assistant Overseer on HM Airship R34 from 1918 to 1919.

The present work was executed in 1914, the year Flint was elected as an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours (now the Royal Watercolour Society).

His works can be found in museum collections internationally: Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery and London, Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum; Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; The Art Institute of Chicago, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba and Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana.