Eccentric 19th-century genre painter or the first Irish Realist? Julian Campbell considers forgotten Irish artist George Sharp, in this his bicentenary year
When Irish artist Harriet O’Hagan, a student in Paris in the 1860s, began to exhibit at the Paris Salon, she cited the fact that she was ‘élève (pupil) de Mm. Couture et Sharp’.² The former artist ran a successful cosmopolitan studio, and had been the teacher of Nathaniel Hone. The name ‘Sharp’ might have gone unnoticed amongst the scores of French names listed in the catalogues of the Salon, the most prestigious exhibition in Europe, were it not for the fact that O’Hagan’s family correspondence confirms she had been a pupil of George Sharp in Dublin
The Lemon Street Gallery, in collaboration with RTÉ, are currently hosting an exhibition marking the fiftieth anniversary of the photography of Dublin by Nevill Johnson. For the first time a chronological account of Nevill Johnson’s artistic career is illustrated; mainly through photography, but also incorporating his painting and writing. The paintings range from the early 1940s to the ‘London’ paintings. The occasion also marks the launch of the Nevill Johnson Annual Award to assist emerging artists in the North and the South of Ireland, thereby acknowledging the influence of Belfast and Dublin on Nevill Johnson’s artistic development. At the height of his career as a painter Nevill Johnson turned to photography; Eoin O’Brien and Dickon Hall explain why