Malcolm Osborne is best known as an etcher and engraver of portraits, figure subjects and townscapes. An influential teacher, he was head of the engraving school at the Royal College of Art for many years. Malcolm Osborne was born at 2 Waterloo Place, Frome, Somerset, on 1 August 1880, the fifth of six children of Alfred Osborne, and his wife, Sarah (née Biggs), both of whom were teachers. The artistic talents of the children were encouraged by their parents and, of Malcolm’s brothers, Rex would become an illustrator and Fred a designer. Malcolm was educated in Bristol at the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College and then the School of Art, Queen’s Road.
In 1901, Malcolm Osborne moved to London with his brother, Harold, and, as the result of a Royal Exhibition Scholarship, he studied at the Royal College of Art, taking classes in black-and-white design from Professor Charles Lethaby and etching and engraving from Sir Frank Short. While there, he won the British Institute Scholarship for etching and, in 1904, published his first etching.
From 1905, he exhibited at leading galleries and societies, in London and the provinces, including the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. He immediately became an associate of the latter, and a full member four years later, in 1909. In this early period, he undertook a number of sketching tours, mainly in Dorset, Sussex and France.
During the First World War, Osborne served in Artists’ Rifles and 60th Division in France, Salonika and Palestine. While in command of a trench mortar company outside Jerusalem in 1918, he received the news that he had been elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy. Following his demobilisation in July 1919, and his return to London, he taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, while, in 1924, he succeeded Frank Short as Professor of the Engraving School at the Royal College of Art, and proved almost equally influential. He was elected to the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists in 1925 and a full Royal Academician in 1926.
In 1927, Osborne married Amy Stableford at St Luke’s Church, Kensington, and they settled at 44 Redcliffe Gardens, West Brompton. Two years later, he was the subject of both an exhibition at the Rembrandt Gallery and a monograph by Malcolm Salaman (in The Studio’s series ‘Modern Masters of Etching’).
Osborne served as President of the RE between 1938 and 1962. until 1948, he continued to head the RCA’s Engraving School, both in London and in Ambleside, when it went to the Lake District for the course of the Second World War. On his retirement from the RCA in 1948, he was created CBE. In 1956, he was elected a Senior Member of the Royal Academy. Malcolm Osborne died at home in London on 22 September 1963.
His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum and the V&A; and the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford).
Further reading:
Hal Bishop, ‘Osborne, Malcolm’ (1880-1963)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/64828
