Walter Steggles was a British painter. Born in London in 1908, Steggles first began his artistic education by studying painting at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute and later the Bow and Bromley Evening Institute, both significant centres where many of the East London Group first began their artistic careers. Together with his peers in the Group, Steggles first participated in a group exhibition held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1928. Encouraged by a dealer who enjoyed the artists’ work, Steggles studied engraving and etching at the West Ham Technical College. The prospect of becoming an engraver did not prove to be a very prosperous endeavour, and Steggles soon returned his focus to painting. His small scale oil landscapes gained considerable popularity in the 1930s. Together with his brother, Harold, Steggles work was on display at the Lefevre Gallery in Mayfair in 1938. Despite his early success the artist continued to further his artistic education at the Central School of Arts and Crafts between the years of 1939 – 1943, his work developing significantly as a result of his training under and alongside talented contemporaries. His education and artistic successes were pursued alongside a full-time working career, initially for the shipping company Furness Withy before working for the Ministry of Transport. Offers of employment as an Official War Artist during the Second World War were declined.

Following his retirement in 1967 Steggles was able to concentrate his efforts on painting full-time. In the later years of his career Steggles began to move away from the urban East London views that made his name, focusing instead on more traditional landscape scenes as the artist travelled extensively throughout Britain in search of interesting subjects. The artist died in 1997. His work remains in the collection of the Manchester City Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society.