Winifred Marie Louise Austen

Winifred Maria Louise Austen (12 July 1876 – 1 November 1964) was an English illustrator, painter, etcher and aquatint engraver, particularly known for her detailed depictions of small mammals and birds.

Early years and education Born in Ramsgate, Kent, in 1876, her parents were Josiah Austin, a Cornish naval surgeon, and Fanny (née Mann) Austin. Her father eventually went on to become a doctor in London. She attended the London County Council School of Arts and Crafts, where she was taught by Cuthbert Edmund Swan, an animal painter. Austen also took private lessions with the artist Louise Jopling.

Career

Austen's favorite subjects were wild animals and birds, and she received many commissions to illustrate magazines and books. Her etchings of animals and birds were popular in the 1940s and 1950s. At the Royal Academy in London in 1903, she exhibited "The Day of Reckoning", a wolf pursued by hunters through a forest in snow. A second showed a snow scene with a wolf baying, while two others are apparently listening to him. "While the wolf, in nightly prowl, bays the moon with hideous howl," is the legend with the picture. Austen was elected to the Society of Women Artists (1902), the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (1907), the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (1933), and from 1903, she was a fellow of the Royal Zoological Society. Austen became involved with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Havergate Island Bird Sanctuary in Suffolk. She worked hand in hand to try to protect hundreds of species of birds around the United Kingdom.

In 1926 Austen moved to a cottage in Suffolk where she remained for the rest of her life.

Books illustrated A Book of Dogs by E Nesbit, 1898, published by Dent At the Zoo by A Cooke, 1920, published by Nelson Field, River and Hill by E Parker, 1927, published by Allan Marsh and Mud Flat by K Dawson, 1931, published by Country Life Just an Oridinary Shoot, 1935, Country Life Birds Ashore and Aforeshore by P Chalmers, 1935, published by Collins.