Frederick Austin, printmaker and painter, born in Leicester. The younger brother of Robert Sargeant Austin, he studied at Leicester School of Art and Royal College of Art under Malcolm Osborne, William Rothenstein and Randolph Schwabe, 1924-7. He won the Rome Scholarship for engraving in 1927, just as his brother had done in 1922. Although the influence of his older brother is apparent in his early engraved works, Frederick Austin developed a far more modernistic style during his career. Religious subject matter recurs frequently throughout Frederick Austin’s printed works, all of which betray the influence of early mediaeval art in their almost two dimensional approach to their compositions. The Austin brothers were two of the very few original printmakers who continued to use traditional print making techniques after the Second World War.
