Club, with whom he continued to exhibit regularly. With Walter Sickert he became a leading British Impressionist, showing works at the London Impressionist exhibition held at the Goupil Gallery in 1889. Besides the French Impressionists he was influenced by Whistler and, later, such old masters as François Boucher, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable and J. M. W. Turner. Steer was frequently criticised by conservative British critics for his impressionist works such as Boulogne Sands, so much so that for a period he stopped showing his more adventurous works. In the 1890s as he moved away from French Impressionism, Steer's work received greater appreciation. Portraits, such as Girl Reading A Book from 1895, a portrait of Rose Pettigrew, his model and girlfriend, and Portrait of Mrs Raynes (1922) were well received. In 1887 Steer spent some time at the Etaples art colony. In the early 1890s he began to paint more in watercolours than he had previously. Between 1893 and 1911 he visited several sites associated with the 18th century picturesque tour. In 1893 Frederick Brown, the newly appointed Slade Professor of Art, appointed Steer as Professor of Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Steer would teach there, alongside Brown, Henry Tonks and Walter Russell until 1930. This group would continue the Slade tradition of realism in painting and drawing and would influence generations of young artists including Augustus John, William Orpen, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash and Anna Airy. Based in Chelsea, in the summers he painted in Yorkshire, the Cotswolds and the West Country and on the south and east coasts of Britain. During World War I Steer was recruited by Lord Beaverbrook, the chairman of the British War Memorials Committee, to paint pictures of the Royal Navy and he spent some time painting naval formations at Dover. In 1927 Steer began to lose the sight in one eye but he continued to paint, although mostly in watercolours rather than in oils, and his compositions became much looser, at times almost abstract but by 1940 he had stopped painting. In 1931 he was awarded the Order of Merit and died in London, 18 March 1942. His self-portrait is in the collection in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Steer never married and throughout his life was a hypochondriac but was also benign, modest, amusing and held in great regard by those who knew him. References Note Note: Encyclopædia Britannica