Philip Wilson Steer (1860–1942) was an avant-guard impressionist painter. He often visited friends at Walberswick. The Tate calls the paintings he did on Walberswick beach ‘among the most authentically impressionist works produced in Britain’.
His 1889 The Beach at Walberswick inspired Orford-born Maggie Hemingway to write The Bridge, a novel that was adapted into the 1992 film of the same name starring Saskia Reeves.