Paintings
Ellen Sharples began her artistic career making copies of her husband's pastel portraits. Between 1794-1810, her copies followed a similar format of 9"x 7" portraits on gray or tanned paper. She taught herself how to make miniature watercolor copies on ivory, and between 1803-1810 she made miniature portraits either from copies or from life. The income from Ellen's and her children's paintings made the family affluent, and she wrote in her diary:
Copies were frequently required; these I undertook, and was far successful, as to have as many commissions as I could execute; they were thought equal to the original, price the same: we lived in good style associating in the first society.
After 1810, Ellen no longer mentions her own work in her diaries, yet the family continued to practice as portrait painters in Bristol. Ellen's subjects included Joseph Priestley, Martha and George Washington, Benjamin Rush, John and Mrs. Bard, Eleanor Parke Custis, Alexander Hamilton, Sir Joseph Banks, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Today, her works can be found in many museums in the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Independence National Historical Park Collection.
Ellen's daughter Rolinda Sharples became an oil painter of some renown. One of her largest pieces of work was The Trial of Colonel Brereton, painted in 1834.
Royal Academy paintings== From the listing in a book of the Royal Academy exhibitors one can see that Ellen Sharples exhibited her works in 1807, when the family had moved back to England for a short time. She is listed as "Mrs. James (Ellen) Sharples, Miniature painter".
- H. Brown, Esqand Dr. Priestley
- T. Newman, Esq.
- Dr. Priestley
Read more about this topic: Ellen Sharples
Famous quotes containing the word paintings:
“When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards.... Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Not “Seeing is Believing” you ninny, but “Believing is Seeing.” For modern art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
“All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)