Artist Norman Stevens was born in Bradford, England on 17 June 1937 and studied at Bradford College of Art (1952-57), alongside fellow students and friends including David Hockney and David Oxtoby. He went on to study at the Royal College of Art for a further three years, where his circle included R B Kitaj, before winning the Lloyd Landscape and Abbey Minor Travelling Scholarships. Stevens taught art in schools in Manchester and Maidstone, and became Head of Fine Art at Hornsey College, before giving up teaching in 1973 to become a fulltime artist. He was a Gregory Fellow at Leeds University (1974–75) and took up printmaking, specialising in mezzotint and becoming a celebrated master of the craft, whom The Times described as ‘one of the most distinguished and particular painters and printmakers of his generation’. He won the Chichester Arts Festival Prize (1975) and a John Moore’s painting prize (1983), also exhibiting regularly at the British International Print Biennale in Bradford, winning prizes in 1979 and 1982. He also exhibited in Geneva (1974), Scandinavia (1977) and, in 1982, at the European Print Biennale at Baden Baden and the Bilbao Print Biennale. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1987. Norman Stevens died in Bradford, England on 20 August 1988. His work is in collections including The Arts Council, Bradford Museums and Galleries, The Tate, The V&A, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva. A posthumous exhibition of his prints was held at the Royal Academy in 2014.