Explore: Frank Joseph Archer

(1912 - 1995)

Painter and etcher, Frank Joseph Archer was born in Walthamstow, East London, and grew up there during the First World War. Later the family moved to Eastbourne, where he attended Eastbourne School of Art from 1928–32, Brighton School of Art, and then the Royal College of Art, where he won the coveted Rome Scholarship in 1938. Archer moved into teaching, eventually taking over from Wilfred Fairclough as Head of the School of Fine Art at Kingston College of Art from 1962 until 1973. He joined the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers in 1940, and became first an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1972 and later a Fellow. Archer's active last years were spent in Eastbourne, where he had lived much of his childhood. A retrospective exhibition of Archer’s paintings, drawings and etchings was held at the Catto Gallery in Hampstead, north London, in 1990.