Alistair Grant was born in London in 1925. His father was Scottish and his mother was French. She was from the small fishing town of Etaples on the coast of northern France. Grant grew up in Etaples, where he kept a house throughout his life. The region became the deeply rooted inspiration for much of his work His father was half French, half Scottish and Grant learnt English from an early age. He left home in 1941 and went to England to study at Birmingham College of Art (1941-43).

During the Second World War, he served with the RAF as an air-crew wireless operator and was stationed in Egypt. Here he met his first wife Phyllis Fricker with whom he had a daughter, Emma. After the war, he was accepted into the painting school of the Royal College of Art (RCA), 1947-50. His tutors included Carel Weight and Ruskin Spear. He then became interested in printmaking and studied lithography with Edwin La Dell and etching with Robert Austin.

The RCA was to stay an important part of his life for the next 35 years as he worked in the printmaking department at the RCA from 1955, the year he graduated, until 1990 when he retired. He was a tutor in printmaking at the RCA and then became Head of Department in 1970, and was made Professor in 1984 until he retired in 1990. Grant was known as an inspirational head of department, encouraging his students to explore paintings and sculpture alongside their printmaking. He also insisted that all the teaching staff should be practicing artists.

Grant was always full of ideas and he set up many print projects at the RCA. He was also a founder member of the Printmakers Council and with fellow printmakers, Michael Rothenstein, Edward Ardizzone, Anthony Gross and Bernard Cheese he set up a printmakers group called New Editions.

Grant worked on his own printmaking and painting throughout his life, exhibiting regularly. His early etchings, lithographs and paintings were mostly figurative but over the years his work moved from representation to abstraction. From the 1960s his work became increasingly abstract. His prints and paintings showed colours, forms and hints of landscape that evoked his native Northern France and the Normandy coast, the area known as “La Cote Opale”. Using shape and colour, there are recurring themes of children flying kites, fishing boats, the sand dunes, beach balls, and the sea. In an interview 1991 he said:

‘For me, my pictures are a transcription of my feelings for boats, for the sea, the light, for a privileged moment …’

Grant loved the RCA and he ran a superb printmaking department. He oversaw many developments and always had high aspirations for the department, the staff and the students. Over the decades he worked with important printmakers including Edwin La Dell, Julian Trevelyan, Alf Dunn, Chris Orr, Tim Mara as well as visiting artists such as Derek Boshier, John Hoyland and William Scott.

The artist Tim Mara was a student of Grant’s at the RCA and succeeded him as Head of the Printmaking department. In his obituary to Grant he wrote of Grant’s time at the RCA:

“He loved the college, and enjoyed the tussles involved in promoting the interests of printmaking. When I was appointed to succeed him on his retirement from the college in 1990, I was the beneficiary of the best printmaking department in the country.

I had also been a student of Grant's in the mid-Seventies. His students occupied a department bursting with equipment, expertise, confidence and energy. Grant was a tough taskmaster. He believed that strong criticism not only helped the work but engendered resilience - a commodity that would be much valued after graduation.

He was also an initiator. As a young tutor he had seen the potential of screenprinting for artists and introduced it into the department. He incorporated photo-imagery and encouraged wide artistic practice - making books, painting, sculpture, photography, drawing - all of which he believed made the artist bigger by informing the work more deeply……

Alistair Grant was a large personality, a bon viveur. At the college he made sure that things in the Senior Common Room were as they should be - properly convivial. Through his French roots he was a knowledgeable chairman of the wine committee. His table at lunchtime was raucous”.

After retiring from the RCA in 1990, Grant concentrated on his work, exhibiting both in France and in England. His later works are often considered as amongst his very best. His colours are strong and fresh - full of light and space, place and memory. There is a strong sense, particularly in the later works, that he loved what he was printing and painting.

Grant had lots of plans for his retirement, although he had some difficult years in his personal life. His first wife, Phyllis Fricker, to whom he had been married for nearly 40 years, died in 1988. He married Joan Strickland in 1991 but she died in 1995. He then threw himself into his work and was working on more exhibitions but sadly he died unexpectedly in 1997. A memorial exhibition was held at Art First, Cork Street, London in the September that year.