Robert Sargent Austin was born at Leicester on 23 June 1885. He was the son of cabinet maker Robert Austin. He attended the Leicester Municipal School of Art (1909-13), from which he won a scholarship to the RCA in 1914. It was there that he undertook the study of life drawing, which would become a passion he would continue throughout his artistic career. His studies were interrupted by the Great War, during which he served as a gunner in the Royal Artillery, later capturing his experiences in series of drawings. In 1919 he returned to the RCA and learnt the art of etching under Sir Frank Short, a great teacher to successive generations of British printmakers. Short’s technical knowledge was unrivalled and he no doubt, set Austin the challenge of taking up the burin. Austin’s early engravings pay homage to Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Campagnola, Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer. In that period, he produced timeless images of landscapes, figures animals and still-lifes. In 1922 Austin’s prodigious talent earned him a prestigious scholarship in engraving at the British School at Rome. He spent three years in Rome travelling in Umbria and Tuscany. He worked first in etching, before combining it with engraving. In 1925 he first tried his hand at pure engraving with his Woman Milking a Goat. In Italy, Austin met and married the writer Ada May Harrison with whom he illustrated a number of books. They had two daughters, Rachel and Clare. Austin became increasingly well-known as an etcher, but became drawn to in engraving, and returned to London in 1926, to teach that subject at the RCA under Frank Short’s successor, Malcolm Osborne, RA, PRE. Austin was admired by his students for his dry wit and technical discipline. A reserved man, he had the highest standards and was more interested in the practice of art than its theory. During the last ten years of the etching revival between 1920 and 1930, Austin produced etchings from copper plates worked in fine detail in an almost Pre-Raphaelite style. In 1929 Austin first visited Norfolk, a country whose landscapes were to inspire him for the rest of his life, and which he made his country retreat and studio in 1935 when he bought the old Methodist Chapel at Burnham Overy Staithe. It was there that he painted and drew many of his best-loved works, landscapes, and intimate portraits of his wife and children. Austin’s reputation flourished and he exhibited regularly at the RA and RE. His work was published by the Twenty-One Gallery, London. In 1930 they produced a catalogue of his work, written by Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and foremost authority on historical and modern prints. Dodgson would write: ‘Mr Austin has already proclaimed himself, like several other young, and younger, English etchers of today, a rebel against the precept that that an artist should depict the life of his own time. It is a little aftermath of the Pre-Raphaelitism of eighty years ago, with its harking back to the past and its cult of realistic detail.’ From the 1940s onward, Austin produced few prints, but concentrated on drawings and watercolours. During the Second World War, Austin worked as an official war artist with the RCA at Ambleside in Cumberland and executed numerous commissions. His drawings of the period include nurses, balloon operators, fighter pilots, and Woolwich Arsenal. The Imperial War Museum houses 34 such productions by Austin. He returned to teaching at the RCA as Professor of Engraving in 1946. However, after about five years, he began to lose the use of his right thumb, making it increasingly difficult for him to handle the burin any longer. He retired from teaching in 1955. Austin acted as an advisor on the design of banknotes to the Bank of England between 1956 and 1961 and designed the ten shillings and the one pound notes issued in the early 1960s. Five different portraits of Queen Elizabeth II have been used on British banknotes since 1960. These were by Austin (1960), Reynolds Stone (1963), Harry Ecclestone (1970 and 1971) and Roger Withington (1990). Austin was elected RE in 1927 and succeeded Malcolm Osborne as president of the RE in 1962. He was elected a full member of the RWS in 1934 and served as their president from 1957 to 1973. He was elected ARA in 1939 and RA in 1949 as an engraver. His Diploma Work was Woman Praying. Austin died at Burnham Overy Staithe, Norfolk on 18 September 1973 and was buried in Chiswick Churchyard. His work is represented in the collections of the Tate, the V&A, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and the British Museum. A retrospective of his work was held at the Ashmolean in 1980.