Eliza Sharpe (1796–1874) was a British miniature painter who was one of four gifted sisters.

Life

Sharpe was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

to Sussanna and an engraver named William Sharpe and she was baptised on 21 August 1796 at St Phillip's church. The parents allowed Eliza, Louisa, Mary Ann and Charlotte to travel to the continent to inspect galleries in France and Germany. Eliza Sharpe watercolour

William taught each of the daughters to engrave. William and Sussanna moved the Sharpe family to London in 1817. Whilst she was a child, she was painted with her sister Louisa by

George Henry Harlow George Henry Harlow (10 June 1787 – 4 February 1819) was an English people, English painter known mostly for his portraits. Life Harlow was born in St. James's Street, London, the posthumous son of a China merchant, who after some yea ...

. She had nearly fifty miniature portrait paintings accepted at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

starting in 1817. Eliza's sister, Louise, married in 1834 and moved to Dresden. Eliza visited her there when she was in Germany.

Anna Brownell Jameson Anna Brownell Jameson (17 May 179417 March 1860) was an Anglo-Irish art historian whose work spanned art and literary criticism, philosophy, travel writing, and feminism. She became very well known for her extensive writings. Jameson was conne ...

wrote of Louise and Eliza Sharpe that no man could paint like they did. This was not because the Sharpe sisters work was so clever, but because it was so essentially feminine. Like her sister, Eliza became a member of the old Watercolour society where she exhibited over 80 paintings and rose to be their secretary. The most expensive pictures were biblical scenes but her other custom work sold well, though at more modest prices. These prices and her success at having her work engraved for annuals allowed her to amass "a modest little fortune". Eliza died unmarried at the house of her nephew in 1874 in London.Charlotte Yeldham, ‘Sharpe , Louisa (bap. 1798, d. 1843)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 10 Jan 2015
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External links

* Engraving by

John Henry Robinson John Henry Robinson (1796–1871) was an English engraver. Life He was born at Bolton, Lancashire and was brought up in Staffordshire. At the age of 18 he became a pupil of James Heath, for about two years. Robinson was one of the nine eminen ...

of , with a poetical illustration by

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. Landon's writings are emblematic of the transition from Romanticism to Victorian literature. Her first major b ...

in Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833. * Picture in oil colours by George Baxter of in Pictorial Album; or, Cabinet of Paintings, 1837, with a poetical illustration by

* , a painting for Flowers of Loveliness, 1838, engraved by G. Adcock, with a poetical illustration by

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sharpe, Eliza 1796 births 1874 deaths Painters from Birmingham, West Midlands English portrait painters 19th-century English painters English watercolourists Sibling artists English women painters