Updated November 2026 · ranked by our popularity score (searches, visits and orders for each work) · 3 works by George Sharp in our catalogue
In short
If you know one George Sharp painting, it's probably Repose (1867), which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin City. Creeping like Snail unwillingly to School and A Cock and a Terrior round out the three pieces people recognise right away. Our catalogue has 3 works by George Sharp. Below are the 3 people know best, each with its year, where to find it and what makes it special.
The museum that holds the most of the paintings on this page.
| Museum | City | Works by George Sharp | Paintings from this list |
|---|---|---|---|
 National Gallery of Ireland |
Dublin City | 3 | Repose, Creeping like Snail unwillingly to School, A Cock and a Terrior |
Every dated piece by George Sharp on this page comes from a single year, 1867. Here they are.
Pick a year to see its pieces.
Top of the list is Repose (1867), National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin City. Right behind it: Creeping like Snail unwillingly to School and A Cock and a Terrior.
65 years old. George Sharp was born in 1802, and Repose dates from 1867.
We have 3 works by George Sharp in our catalogue.
You'll find most of them in National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin City). The museum list above has the full breakdown.
You can see 3 of the pieces on this page at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin City, including Repose, Creeping like Snail unwillingly to School and A Cock and a Terrior.
Yes. Every painting on this page is available as a hand-painted oil reproduction or a print, in the size that suits you. Just open the painting's page to order.
George Sharp remains a figure defined by the specificities of his era rather than the grandiosity of a movement. Born in Dublin, Ireland, his life spanned the first half of the nineteenth century, a period that demanded a certain technical precision in visual storytelling. He was a painter who understood the weight of a subject, whether it was a landscape or a figurative scene. His work does not rely on abstraction to make a point; instead, it relies on the directness of the image to communicate a specific moment or a particular mood.
His output reflects a commitment to the tangible. Looking at his surviving works, one sees a focus on the structural elements of his subjects. He did not seek to reinvent the visual language of his time but to master the one that existed. This pragmatism is what gives his work its lasting clarity. He was a craftsman of the canvas, focused on the immediate reality of the scene before him.
The breadth of Sharp's work suggests a versatile approach to composition. He moved between different modes of representation, often focusing on the interplay between human figures and their environments. His ability to handle various subjects allowed him to navigate the demands of the nineteenth-century art market without losing his specific sense of form.
His technique was grounded in the traditions of his training. There is a lack of unnecessary ornamentation in his approach. He used line and shade to define volume, ensuring that his subjects occupied a real, physical space. This groundedness is a sharp contrast to the more decorative tendencies found in other artists of the same period.
Sharp died in Dublin in 1877, leaving behind a body of work that serves as a record of mid-nineteenth-century visual sensibilities. He was not a disruptor. He was a practitioner who worked within the established frameworks of his time. His significance lies in this very adherence to the functional purpose of painting: to depict, to record, and to tell a story through clear, legible imagery.
To study Sharp is to study the mechanics of nineteenth-century painting. He provides a window into how artists of his background approached the world through a lens of observation and technical discipline. His work remains a concrete example of the era's commitment to representational accuracy.
