SHORT, SIR FRANK JOB (1857– ), knighted 1911, English engraver and water-colour painter, was born at Stour bridge, Worcestershire, on June 19, 1857. He was educated to be a civil engineer, and came to London in 1881 as assistant to Baldwin Latham in connection with the parliamentary inquiry into the pollution of the river Thames. He was elected an as sociate member of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1883 and the same year joined the National Art training school, South Ken sington, and worked at the Westminster school of art, and at the Schools of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water colours. His real life-work now became that of an original and translator engraver. He was a keen student of the works of J. M, W. Turner; and his etchings and mezzotints from Turner's Liber Studiorum (1885 seq.), wonderful examples of devotion and skill, were among his earliest successes. Short also reproduced
in fine mezzotints several of the pictures of G. F. Watts, and en gravings of the landscapes of David Cox and Peter de Wint. His subtle drawing of the receding lines of the low banks and shallows of river estuaries and flat shores is seen to perfection in many of his original etchings, mezzotints, and aquatints.
Short was elected A.R.A. in 1906 when the rank of associate engraver was revived. As head of the Engraving school at the Royal college of art, South Kensington, he had great influence on younger engravers. He was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1885. In 1910 he succeeded Sir Seymour Haden as president.
See The Etched and Engraved Work of Frank Short, by Edward F. Strange (1908), which describes 285 plates by the artist.