Eric Thornton-Prent was an artist and art historian, born in Moscow in 1894 to an English family. He left Russia in 1922. He received his education in Italy and worked in Latvia. In 1941, Eric moved to Scotland, where he initially lived in Oban and later in Edinburgh. In the 1940s, his works were exhibited at RSA and SSA, but in the 1950s he stopped participating in exhibitions. Prent taught Italian art at Edinburgh College of Art. Shortly before his death on September 27, 1985, he converted to Orthodoxy. In 1986, a memorial exhibition was organized in his honor by the Society of Fine Arts.