Steer was born in
Birkenhead,
Cheshire, the son of a portrait painter and art teacher, Philip Steer (1810–1871) and his wife, Emma Harrison (1816–1898). When Steer was three years old the family moved to Whitchurch near
Monmouth from where, after a period of home schooling, he attended the
Hereford Cathedral School. After finding the examinations of the
British Civil Service too demanding, he became an artist in 1878. He studied at the
Gloucester School of Art, then from 1880 to 1881 at the
South Kensington Drawing Schools. He was rejected by the
Royal Academy of Art, and so studied in Paris between 1882 and 1884, firstly at the
Académie Julian, and then in the
École des Beaux Arts under
Alexandre Cabanel, where he became a follower of the
Impressionist school. When he returned to England, Steer established a studio in London and began to develop an impressionist style in which he depicted beach scenes and seascapes in a silvery translucent light. Works such as
The Bridge,
The Beach at Walberswick (1890) and
Girls Running: Walberswick Pier (1894) show Steer at the peak of his abilities. His misty Impressionist style is striking in such paintings as
The Beach and
Fisher Children. Steer also painted scenes at nearby
Southwold. Between 1883 and 1885 Steer exhibited at the Royal Academy and in 1886 he became a founder of the
New English Art Club, with whom he continued to exhibit regularly. With
Walter Sickert he became a leading British Impressionist, showing works at the London Impressionist exhibition held at the Goupil Gallery in 1889. In 1893
Frederick Brown, the newly appointed Slade Professor of Art, appointed Steer as Professor of Painting at the
Slade School of Fine Art in London. Steer would teach there, alongside Brown,
Henry Tonks and
Walter Russell until 1930. This group would continue the Slade tradition of realism in painting and drawing and would influence generations of young artists including
Augustus John,
William Orpen,
Stanley Spencer,
Paul Nash and
Anna Airy. Based in
Chelsea, in the summers he painted in
Yorkshire, the
Cotswolds and the West Country and on the south and east coasts of Britain. During
World War I Steer was recruited by
Lord Beaverbrook, the chairman of the
British War Memorials Committee, to paint pictures of the
Royal Navy and he spent some time painting naval formations at Dover. In 1927 Steer began to lose the sight in one eye but he continued to paint, although mostly in watercolours rather than in oils, and his compositions became much looser, at times almost abstract but by 1940 he had stopped painting. In 1931 he was awarded the
Order of Merit and died in London, 18 March 1942. His self-portrait is in the collection in the
Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. Steer never married and throughout his life was a hypochondriac but was also benign, modest, amusing and held in great regard by those who knew him. ==Gallery==