William Frank Calderon was born in 1865. He was the third son of the painter Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Keeper of the Royal Academy. Frank was educated at the University College School, and at the age of 14, obtained the Trevelyan Goodall Scholarship. He later obtained the Slade Scholarship and studied there under Professor Alphonse Legros. His first picture to be exhibited at the RA was Feeding the Hungry (1881). It was purchased by Queen Victoria for the Royal Collection. His Horse Fair exhibited in 1894, was considered one of his best works. Calderon painted landscapes, portraits and figure pictures as well as sporting scenes. He worked mainly in oil and although he excelled at depicting animals, his horses are some of the finest of his time. His most famous painting The Heat of the Day depicts a team of horses stopped for watering by a river, whilst hauling a load of timber. It was widely reproduced and was probably his most important work, gaining him many important commissions. He was awarded the gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1906. He worked firstly in London, where he had a studio in his father’s house. He then spent a few years at Midhurst in Sussex, where he started up his summer classes, returning to London after his marriage in 1892 to Ethel Armstead, third daughter of the noted sculptor Henry Hugh Armstead, RA. Calderon’s most notable achievement was the founding of his School of Animal Painting in 1894 at 54 Baker Street, London, where it remained until 1911. The logistics of maintaining, organising, feeding, watering and exercising a resident menagerie of animals hardly bears thinking about. Calderon also spent much time arranging the appearance of his equine models, which due to limitations of space, could not be kept on the premises. For obvious reasons, lightning sketches were an important feature of the curriculum. Classes for ladies only for painting the human figure from the nude were held on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, while similar classes for men students took place on Monday and Thursday afternoons, with the whole school working in the costume and portrait painting class or in the composition class on Wednesdays. The large cast-room contained a number of productions made specially for Calderon by a late member of the Royal Zoological Society and ranged from snakes, monkeys, armadillos and sheep, and endless horses and dogs, to special parts, such as heads and paws of lions and tigers – as well as many anatomically set up animal skeletons and casts of partial dissections, made by an expert, of a horse and of a calf with the outside skins removed. Calderon should be note for the wisdom of his aphorism ‘You can’t make a line mean anything unless you know what you intend it to mean.’ In 1911 he built a new school in conjunction with his own private house and studio at Kensington. The school was highly influential and many of the 20th century horse painters studied there. Among his students were Cecil Aldin, Lionel Edwards, Alfred Munnings, Lady Helena Gleichen, Frederick Whiting and C E Studdy, besides a good many, who, with already-established reputations came to him from time to time for the special purpose of studying animals. Calderon had a thorough understanding of anatomy and published Animal Painting and Anatomy in 1936. With 244 illustrations, it combines useful information on important anatomical features with directions on how to handle the subjects and how to express their forms and postures. It was republished by Dover Publications in 1975 and remains much sought-after. For two consecutive years, Calderon lectured, by invitation of the Council, to the students of the Royal Academy on animal anatomy, analysis of form and its relation to drawing. His sporting scenes included horse shows, horse fairs, hunting and polo. He also carried out some illustration work, most notably for Joseph Jacobs’ book The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox. Despite his teaching, Calderon was a regular exhibitor at the RA in the period 1881-1921, showing no fewer than 60 paintings. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in oil colours and died in 1943. His paintings may be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Brisbane, the McKelvie Trust of Auckland, New Zealand, The Corporation of Worcester and others. His dog painting A Lady of Quality (1913) may be found in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts at Houston, Texas.