William Russell Flint was born in Edinburgh in 1880. He was the eldest son of Francis Wigton Flint, a commercial artist. He left school at the age of fourteen and was apprenticed to a firm of lithographers. He subsequently studied art at evening classes and later moved to London, where he studied at Hatherley's School of Art. Throughout the thirties he found a ready market for his more popular beach girls, a number of which were published as signed limited editions. Bamburgh sands remained a favourite locale but as he was now living in London, the Brton beach at Parame near St Malo was almost as convenient (and probably warmer). Of his beach paintings he wrote that they were 'In my opinion, technically the most difficult of all forms of water -colour painting and the purest. I might be asked why and the answer would be that these subjects are essentially the most delicate, direct and subtle of all. Any heaviness, any fumbling, any muddiness of colour would ruin them. I claim that there is far more in them than meets even the most professional eyes, and I unashamedly confess to amusement at imitators efforts. I never "make them up." Museums and Art Galleries Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Toronto Art Gallery, Canada; Sydney Art Gallery, Australia; Chicago Art Gallery, U.S.A.; Brooklyn Art Gallery, New York U.S.A.; The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and many other public collections in this country and abroad.