F. Ernest Jackson ARA (1872 - 1945)

F. Ernest Jackson ARA (1872 - 1945)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

F. Ernest Jackson was born in Lockwood, near Huddersfield, Yorkshire in 1872. He started off as an apprentice lithographer to a local printing firm. In 1912, he was one of the founding members of the Senefelder Club, a club consisting of lithographers and printers, because of Jackson’s involvement in the club he was asked to design posters for the London Underground in 1913. By 1921 he was teaching at the Byam Shaw School and eight years later he took over as the principle until 1940. Whilst teaching at the Byam Shaw School he was also teaching in the Royal Academy Schools from 1921 until 1939, spending three days at Byam Shaw and two days at the Royal Academy of Arts.

When Jackson became a teacher, drawing made him turn to drawing for its own sake. As a teacher he insisted that drawing was an intellectual exercise and an interpretation of nature. He was recognised by other Academicians for the successful changes he introduced in teaching drawing in the Royal Academy Schools. His students began by drawing from plaster casts, then moved on to life class, and then to the “head room”. During the Second World War, both schools closed, and Jackson was left without work.

The first work he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts was an oil painting of his future wife Gertrude Templeton in 1907, and in the 1920s Jackson began exhibiting oil paintings regularly at the Royal Academy. In 1944 Jackson became an ARA. He died in Oxford following a road accident in 1945.