Dorothea Sharp paintings for sale

Dorothea Sharp, the eldest of 5 children, her father James Sharp and mother Emily Jane (nee Sturge), was born on 10th January 1873 into a prosperous Quaker family in Dartford, Kent. James Sharp ran the family business, James Sharp and Sons, Master Builders and Timber Merchants, which was established in 1770 and was a sizeable firm which remained in the Sharp family for almost 2 centuries. Dorothea’s given names were Lydia Mary but she later chose to be known as Dorothea. Her ultimate choice of subject matter, and the joie de vivre that permeates her life’s work, can in part be traced to her start in life. This was a world in which William Gladstone was Prime Minister and life in Victorian Britain was prosperous and secure for the middle classes. British innovation and industry were the envy of the world. Moreover Dorothea’s life happily coincided with dynamic developments in the art world pioneered in France where she later studied, and a revolution in women’s rights which for the first time afforded female artists the opportunity to exhibit in major public exhibitions. 

Although interested in art as a child, it was not until the age of twenty-one that Sharp seriously took to painting. Soon after her 21st birthday, her wealthy uncle, George Sturge died, bequeathing her a legacy of £100. This enabled Dorothea to enrol at the Richmond School of Landscape Painting in 1894 under the tutelage of Charles Edward Johnson (1832-1913). She quickly chose to paint in oils at a time when most ‘young ladies’ were expected to choose the rather more gentile-sounding medium of watercolour. When her uncle’s legacy was almost exhausted, she enrolled in the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster), where her work was admired by visiting tutors, Sir George Clausen and David Murray. The latter guided Sharp with figure drawing but the young artist was most profoundly influenced by Clausen, one of the greatest exponents of British Impressionism and an admirer of the French realist, Jules Bastien-Lepage. The dramatic halo effect apparent in Clausen’s work was adopted by Sharp. She would paint looking towards the sun, thus creating bright, almost flared edges around her subjects. Against this, darker tones in her subjects would contrast, creating a whole effect not unlike the silver lining around a cloud.

Shortly after the untimely death of her father at the age of 56 in March 1900, Dorothea, having now inherited a private income, set off for Paris with her widowed mother Emily. There she studied at the Academie Colarossi in Montparnasse under Claudio Castaluchio Diana (known as Castaluchio), a keen supporter of female artists. But it was the work of Claude Monet that was to have the most profound and lasting effect upon her art, resulting in the highly impressionistic and spontaneous style that she was to adopt for the rest of her life. It was in Paris that Sharp started to paint rapidly with a heavily loaded brush of pure colour applied boldly and resisting any blending and muddying of brushstrokes on the canvas. And Monet’s influence is again apparent in Sharp’s introduction of rich hues to her shadows. But whilst her brushstrokes became more rapid, confident and charged with paint, her work always evidenced an innate understanding and love of colour.

Dorothea’s habit of showing faces in the foreground with rudimentary detail of eyes, noses and mouths, and figures in the background often with no such discernible features at all, is consistent with Impressionist theory which requires painting the subject as it appears in the moment, often in a fleeting moment, and not as we believe or know it to be. As she later wrote, advising young aspiring artists: “Remember the scene before you may occupy several square miles of space, whereas your sketching board is 14” x 11”. So how can you expect to introduce every detail into such a small area? It is not necessary, for you are PAINTING – not photographing”.

Upon her return to London, Sharp became actively involved in the Society of Women Artists in London, exhibiting with them from 1902 on, becoming an Associate in 1903, and full member in 1908.

In 1914 Dorothea’s mother purchased a considerable Italianate house, 22 Blomfield Road in Little Venice, London. Dorothea initially had an apartment there which consisted of 2 large ground floor rooms and for the rest of her life would retreat time and again to this London base.

Sharp first visited St Ives in 1920 and took one of the Porthmeor Studios which she retained for many years in parallel with the London residence. In St Ives she met her lifelong friend Marcella Smith, 14 years her junior but a considerable artist who had studied at the Academie Delecluse in Paris. Marcella appears in many of Dorothea’s most sumptuous works. Dorothea also befriended the Lamorna artist and master of equine form, Alfred Munnings. 

Whilst the 1920s was a prolific period for Sharp showing at the big institutional galleries (23 works shown that decade at the RA alone) it was not until the 1930s that Sharp held her first one-woman show at the James Connell and Sons Gallery, Old Bond Street (1933). The show was a resounding success with over 75% of the works sold. That same year Dorothea became a member of the St Ives Society of Artists. Initially exhibiting at the Porthmeor Gallery, opened by Julius Olsson, the society later moved to the Mariner’s Chapel known thereafter as the New Gallery. Part of the crypt was fitted out as a further gallery where the younger, non-figurative artists exhibited. The society included such notables as Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. Throughtout the 1930s until the outset of the Second World War, Dorothea’s life, accompanied by Marcella Smith, developed into an enviable pattern of travelling Europe in the winter, from Southern France to Algiers, and summering in St Ives. In St Ives Dorothea had first occupied a flat next the Lifeboat station but later moved to Balcony Studio, along the wharf and overlooking the harbour, Smeaton’s Pier and Lighthouse. 

In 1935, Harold Sawkins, the Editor of The Artist Magazine, praised Dorothea Sharp as ‘one of England’s greatest living woman painters’, and commented upon the particular attraction of her art: ‘No other woman artist gives us such joyful paintings as she. Full of sunshine and luscious colour, her work is always lively, harmonious and tremendously exhilarating ... the chief attractions of Miss Sharp’s delightful pictures are her happy choice of subjects, and her beautiful colour schemes. Rollicking children bathed in strong sunlight, playing in delightful surroundings, her subjects appeal because they are based on the joy of life”.

At the outbreak of WW2, Dorothea and Marcella seconded themselves fulltime to St Ives in the Balcony Studio, where they remained for the duration of the war. During the war both artists joined Lamorna Birch, Stanhope Forbes, Laura Knight and Dod Procter in holding exhibitions in aid of the Red Cross. London exhibitions including the RBA continued and artists were encouraged to paint cheerful subjects to lift the public spirit; not surprisingly Dorothea’s St Ives works found much favour.

Dorothea had no children and often her child subjects are without an adult; independent and secure with the artist as chaperone. The children of her two sisters, Winifred and Frances, provided her with a ready supply of models and the artist remained close to her sisters and nieces throughout her life. She spent much of her time painting these children outside, making rapid notes in her sketchbook, which she later worked up in her studio. This was an approach which she refined throughout her career and which ideally suited her oeuvre and the constantly moving subject matter of young children.

Sharp wrote a series of articles for the Artist Magazine in 1931 which were later adapted for her book ‘The Student’s Book of Oil Painting’ which was published in 1937 and proved so popular it was reprinted again in 1946, 1947 and 1952. 

She exhibited at The Royal Academy for nearly 50 years (1901–1948) successfully submitting a total of 52 paintings to the RA summer exhibitions. As previously mentioned, her most prolific decade at the RA was the 1920s when she often showed 3 paintings per summer show, that feat being repeated in 1944. Sharp further exhibited at the Paris Salon, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Society of Women Artists for which she became Vice-President and Acting President for Dame Laura Knight.

For several years she managed Lanham Galleries in St Ives, which showcased the work of Newlyn and St Ives School painters. But after the acrimonious break-up of the St Ives Society of Artists in 1949, Dorothea now in her mid-70s, based herself more permanently at her Blomfield Road studio in London. Weakening eyesight and creeping arthritis (which was first diagnosed as early as 1925), particularly in her hands, had begun to really take hold by the late 1940s. Dorothea, determined to remain upbeat and to continue painting, concentrated mostly on flower studies on wooden panels, which she could execute relatively comfortably in her studio. Her last summer exhibits at the RA were still lifes; June Flowers in 1947 and In a Cottage Window in 1948. In her final months, despite the increasingly disabling effect of her arthritis, her passion for painting never waned and she resorted to using her fingers and thumbs to apply paint, paintbrushes being too painful to grasp. 

Dorothea died on 17th December 1955, aged 82 at home with Marcella by her side. Her ashes were scattered amongst the flowers in the gardens of Golders Green Cementary. The Times obituary hailed her as “Free from the suggestion of ulterior motives, Miss Sharp's pictures were equally free from monotony. To her command of variety in swinging rhythms, she added a vibrating touch that was in the best tradition of English Impressionism”.