Norman Ackroyd, painter, printmaker, and educator, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England on March 26, 1938. He attended Leeds College of Art between 1956 and 1961 where he was introduced to etching. To pursue etching further, he attended the Royal College of Art in London between 1961 and 1964, and it was there that he studied under Julian Trevelyan.

In 1965 Ackroyd began teaching part-time to keep financially afloat but limited teaching to two days a week. In 1994, he was appointed Professor of Etching at the University of the Arts.

Ackroyd was elected Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1988 and a Royal Academician on June 26, 1991. He was also elected Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art in 2000 and, in 2007, was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to printmaking and art in the United Kingdom.

In 1975, Ackroyd moved to Bermondsey in south-east London where he converted a former leather warehouse. The top two floors were living space and the lower two floors were devoted to studio needs. The bottom floor housed his large etching press, which was built by the firm Welsch about 1900. Besides painting and etching, Ackroyd received numerous mural commissions, which he produced in etched stainless steel or bronze.

Ackroyd has had numerous solo exhibitions and his work is in the collections of the Albertina Museum, British Museum, Musée d’Art et d’Historie in Geneva, National Gallery of Canada, National Gallery of Norway, National Gallery of Scotland, National Gallery of South Africa, Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk of Amsterdam, as well as the Royal Collection and the Tate Gallery in London. In the United States he is represented in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the National Gallery, and the Utah Museum of Fine Art.

Norman Ackroyd died on 16 September 2024.