Dorothea Sharp (10 January 1873 – 17 December 1955) was a British artist best known for her landscapes and naturalistic studies of children at play.

Life and career

Sharp was born in

Dartford Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames Estuary, is Thurrock in ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, the eldest of five children of James Sharp and Emily Jane (nee Sturge), and christened Lydia Mary, although she preferred to be known as Dorothea. She began her training aged 21, when, after inheriting £100 from an uncle, she attended the Richmond art school run by C. E. Johnson RI. She went on to study at the

Regent Street Polytechnic The University of Westminster is a public university, public university based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1838 as the Royal Polytechnic Institution, it was the first Polytechnic (United Kingdom), polytechnic to open in London. The Po ...

, where her work was admired by

George Clausen Sir George Clausen (18 April 1852 – 22 November 1944) was a British artist working in oil and watercolour, etching, mezzotint, drypoint and occasionally lithographs. He was knighted in 1927. Biography George Clausen was born at 8 William Str ...

and David Murray. She later went to Paris, where she encountered the work of the Impressionists – in particular

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...

– that was to have a profound and lasting effect on her art, resulting in the highly impressionistic and spontaneous style that she was to adopt for the rest of her life. In 1903 she became an Associate of the

Society of Women Artists The Society of Women Artists (SWA) is a British art body dedicated to celebrating and promoting fine art created by women. It was founded as the Society of Female Artists (SFA) in 1855, offering women artists the opportunity to exhibit and sell ...

, and in 1908 a full member, going on to serve as vice-president for 4 years. She was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1907 and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1922. Sharp exhibited at The Royal Academy from 1901 to 1948 and held her first one-woman show at the Connell Gallery in 1933; this was a great success and she was described as 'one of England's greatest living woman painters' by Harold Sawkins, editor of ''The Artist''. Sharp became a good friend to the Canadian Impressionist artist

Helen McNicoll Helen Galloway McNicoll (December 14, 1879 – June 27, 1915) was a Canadian impressionist painter. She was one of the most notable women artists in Canada in the early twentieth century and achieved considerable success during her decade-l ...

, and the two travelled together in France and Italy until the outbreak of the First World War. McNicoll died in 1915.Samantha Burton, Helen McNicoll: Life and Work, The Canadian Art Library, 2020. Later, Sharp travelled with fellow artist Marcella Smith, who became a lifelong friend. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Sharp travelled to Europe (e.g.

Cassis Cassis (; Occitan: ''Cassís'') is a commune situated east of Marseille in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, whose coastline is known in English as the French Riviera, in Southern France. It is a ...

) to paint, and also to

Bosham Bosham () is a coastal village, ecclesiastical parish and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, within the historic county of Sussex, England, centred about west of Chichester with its clustered developed part west of this. ...

and

St Ives, Cornwall St Ives (, meaning "Ia of Cornwall, St Ia's cove") is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times, it was comm ...

. Sharp was made an honorary member of the St. Ives Society of Artists (STISA) in 1928. Sharp died on 17 December 1955, aged 81.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sharp, Dorothea 1874 births 1955 deaths 19th-century English painters 20th-century English painters 19th-century English women artists 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Regent Street Polytechnic English women painters People from Bosham People from Dartford People from St Ives, Cornwall 20th-century British women painters 19th-century British women painters

Life and career

References

Further reading

External links