Anthony Gross the painter, watercolourist and etcher was born in London in 1905 and studied painting and engraving at the Slade. Later he studied art in Paris and Madrid as well as travelling widely in Europe and Africa.

Gross spent much time in France and met his wife in Paris. In 1940, as the invading German Army occupied France, Gross evacuated his family on one of the last ships to leave Bordeaux. He was appointed an Official War Artist covering campaigns in Africa, the Middle and Far East. He landed in Normandy with the Allied troops on D-Day; apparently holding his artist's materials above his head as he waded ashore. He was very prolific, producing more than five hundred pictures during the War.

Post-war Gross spent much time in France before finally buying a house in the south-west at Le Boulve in 1955. He then settled into a pattern of living and working there during the summer but returning to London each winter.

In 1968 the Victoria and Albert Museum held a large retrospective exhibition of his work and in 1980 he was elected a Royal Academician. Gross also wrote an influential book on printing entitled Etching, Engraving and Intaglio Printing.

Gross died in 1984.