DOROTHEA SHARP (British, 1874-1955). At the Fountain. Oil on canvas. 29 x 24 inches (73.7 x 61.0 cm). Signed lower left:...

Description

DOROTHEA SHARP (British, 1874-1955)
At the Fountain
Oil on canvas
29 x 24 inches (73.7 x 61.0 cm)
Signed lower left: Dorothea Sharp

A second, unsigned painting, Picking Summer Flowers is verso.

PROVENANCE:
Joseph Sator Gallery, Dallas, Texas;
Private collection, Dallas, Texas.

In 1935, the editor of The Artist magazine, Harold Sawkins, waxed eloquent about Dorothea Sharp, whom he considered "one of England's greatest living woman painters":

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 (Harold Sawkins, The Artist, April 1935, pp. 55-8).

At the Fountain from 1918 perfectly visualizes these accolades. Here, Sharp demonstrates her signature Impressionist techniques - soft palette, dappled light, and feathery, spontaneous brushwork - as well as the very subject that made her famous, a child, or children, playing in a garden. The painting is additionally noteworthy because its canvas verso bears a second Sharp painting, Picking Summer Flowers.

Born in Dartford, Kent, Sharp did not seriously take up painting until the age of twenty-one. The death of an uncle who left her one hundred pounds enabled her to enroll at the art school in Richmond, Surrey, and she then attended the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she was encouraged by the art critics George Clausen and David Murray. However, it was in Paris that Sharp achieved her complete artistic development, studying the avant-garde Impressionism of Claude Monet, who would have the most profound and lasting effect on her art.

Although primarily a painter of landscapes with children, Sharp also designed posters and covers for magazines, and she wrote a series of articles on oil painting for The Artist. Her Impressionist paintings are in museums around the world, including the Auckland Museum; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Manchester Art Gallery; and Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne.





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