Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sharpe, Louisa
SHARPE, LOUISA, afterwards Mrs. Seyffarth (1798–1843), watercolour-painter born in 1798, was the third daughter of William Sharpe, a Birmingham engraver. Her father brought her and her three sisters, who all practised art, to London about 1816.
Louisa, the most gifted of the four sisters, commenced as a miniature-painter, exhibiting portraits at the Royal Academy from 1817 to 1829, when she was elected a member of the ‘Old’ Watercolour Society. She then turned to costume subjects, and her domestic and sentimental scenes and illustrations to the poets were much admired for their graceful treatment and exquisite finish. Many of these were engraved for the ‘Keepsake’ and ‘Forget-me-not’ annuals and Heath's ‘Book of Beauty’ between 1829 and 1839. In 1834 Miss Sharpe married Professor Woldemar Seyffarth of Dresden, and thenceforth resided in that city, continuing to exhibit in Pall Mall until her death at Dresden on 28 Jan. 1843. Her daughter Agnes exhibited drawings occasionally at the Royal Academy and the Suffolk Street gallery between 1850 and 1859.
Charlotte Sharpe (d. 1849), the eldest of the family, painted portraits, beginning to exhibit in 1817. On her early marriage with a Captain Morris, she for a time gave up painting, but domestic troubles compelled her to resume the profession, at which she worked for the support of her family until her death in 1849.
Eliza Sharpe (1796–1874), the second sister, began her career as a miniaturist, and was elected in 1829 of the ‘Old’ Water-colour Society, to the exhibitions of which she contributed at intervals for forty years. Her drawings were of the same class as those of her sister Louisa, but inferior in composition and execution; some of them were engraved for the same publications. She retired from membership of the ‘Old’ Watercolour Society in 1872. Towards the end of her life Eliza Sharpe was employed in making watercolour copies of pictures in the South Kensington Museum, her last work being a set of copies of Raphael's cartoons. She died unmarried on 11 June 1874 at the residence of her nephew, Mr. C. W. Sharpe the engraver, at Burnham, Maidenhead. A humorous drawing by her of herself and two of her sisters is in the print-room of the British Museum.
Mary Anne Sharpe (d. 1867), the youngest of the sisters, exhibited portraits and domestic subjects first at the Royal Academy and afterwards with the Society of British Artists, of which she was elected an honorary member in 1830.
[Roget's Hist. of the Old Watercolour Society; Clayton's English Female Artists, 1876; Art Journal, 1874; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1893; private information.]