Working as a painter and printmaker, William Walcot became the most celebrated architectural artist in England during the 1920s and 30s.
William Walcot was born at Lustdorf, near Odessa, on 10 March 1874, during his childhood, he travelled through Europe with his parents, attending schools in Amiens and Paris in the 1880s. On returning to Russia at the age of 17, he studied architecture under Louis Benois at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St Petersburg (1895-97), and also in Paris at Atelier Redon, in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He practised architecture in Moscow for five years, designing the city’s Hotel Metropol (1898-1902) and several villas, and subsequently visiting Rome and London. Settling in London in 1907, Walcot was first employed as a draughtsman to the architect Eustace Frere. He soon became a freelance draughtsman, producing presentation drawings for a number of leading architects to show their clients and to exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts. He showed watercolours and etchings with leading exhibiting societies, and was elected to the membership of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and the Royal Society of British Artists. He was additionally a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and an associate of the British School at Rome. The most celebrated architectural draughtsman in England through the 1920s and 30s. His work is represented in the collections of The Cleveland Museum of Art