Painter and teacher, born in London, who while studying medicine switched to attend the Slade School of Fine Art under Henry Tonks, where fellow students were William Coldstream and Claude Rogers, for long a friend. Afterwards, Sweet travelled in Europe where he became fluent in French, Spanish and Catalan, returning to England at the outbreak of the Spanish civil war. From 1938–60, Sweet taught at the West of England College of Art in Bristol, where he died, becoming head of fine art. After early retirement he continued to paint, showing his realistic, painterly work at RA, Browse & Darby and elsewhere. Sweet was a passionate ornithologist, became an authority on raptors and wrote about them. On his death Judith Greenbury, a student of his in the 1940s, wrote a memoir, published in 1998, with insights into art teaching of that period.