Philip Wilson Steer

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Philip Wilson Steer OM (28 Dec 1860 – 18 March 1942) was an English artist.

Steer was born in Birkenhead, the son of the portrait painter Philip Steer (1810-1871). After finding the examinations of the Civil Service too demanding, he became an artist in 1878. He studied at the Gloucester School of Art and 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. He studied at the Académie Julian, and then in the École des Beaux Arts under Cabanel. There he became one of the few English Impressionists. He is known for his landscapes, such as 'The Beach at Walberswick' (1890; Tate Gallery, London). He became a leader (with Walter Sickert) of the English Impressionist movement and was one of the founders of the New English Art Club in 1886.

During the First World War, he was recruited by Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Information, to paint pictures of the Royal Navy. His self-portrait is in the collection in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

He also taught such artists as Anna Airy, an etcher.

Note: Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition of 1911 incorrectly refers to Philip Wilson Steer as Paul Wilson Steer.