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, Kent, 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, 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, dry point and occasionally lithographs. He was knighted in 1927.
Biography
George Clausen was born at 8 William S ...
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 impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
– 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, 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- ...
, 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) to paint, and also to
Bosham
Bosham is a coastal village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, centred about west of Chichester with its clustered developed part west of this. Its land forms a broad peninsula projecting into natural Chiche ...
and
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives ( kw, Porth Ia, meaning "Ia of Cornwall, St Ia's cove") is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commerci ...
. 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
Further reading
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External links
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{{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 women painters
19th-century women painters