A SOCIETY PORTRAIT ARTIST

Self Portrait

Gathered by User:Dcoetzee

Source National Portrait Gallery, London

From en.wikipedia.org

Self Portrait

From portraitsofpainters.blogspot.com

The son of Irish immigrants, Shannon was born in Auburn, New York. In 1870 he moved with his family to Saint Catherine's, Ontario where he displayed early artistic talent so much so that his father sent him to study art at the South Kensington School in London (now the Royal College of Art). There at the age of 18 he won the gold medal in the annual competition of all the art schools in the United Kingdom. He was immediately commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint the portraits of the Hon. Horatio Stopford and Mrs Henry Bourke (both now in the Royal Collection), which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881 and 1882 respectively.

(Taylor Gallery, London)

Violet, Duchess of Rutland

From uniquearts.ltd.uk

On the Dunes (Lady Shannon and Kitty)

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Gift of John Gellatly From liveinternet.ru

William Fisher Favell

Surgeon of Sheffield Infirmary

Collection: Sheffield Teaching Hospitals

NHS Foundation Trust

From bbc.co.uk

Michaelmas

From artmight.com

In The Springtime

From onokart.wordpress.com

Young Woman in Blue

From xaxor.com

Lady Barber in a Landscape

Collection: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

From bbc.co.uk

Martha Constance Hattie Onions (1869–1933, foundress of the Barber Institute) married the property developer Henry Barber in 1893. They moved into the eighteenth-century Culham Court on the Thames in the same year. The grounds overlooking the river appear as a backdrop for this full-length portrait in which she is accompanied by her two Yorkshire terriers. The Barber collection contains more than twenty other portraits of Lady Barber, many commissioned as gifts for her husband. (bbc.co.uk)

Based on his early success Shannon decided to stay in London where he became a noted society portrait artist. By 1892 he was so successful that he was able to purchase a substantial studio in Holland Park Road where on and off he spent the rest of his life. He was elected an associate of the London Academy of Arts in 1897.

(art-seeker.blogspot.com)

The Flower Girl

Collection Tate

Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1901

From tate.org.uk

"The Flower Girl" was painted while the artist and his family were on holiday at Eastbourne in 1900. The woman was a flower girl whom they met regularly every morning on their way down to the beach; she consented to sit to Shannon in her ordinary working clothes and is shown nursing her baby. The artist's daughter Kitty recalls that her father told the flower girl to come ‘exactly as you are, baby, basket of flowers, the white blouse with the big black spots and old battered straw hat’. (tate.org.uk)

Shannon became one of the leading portrait painters in London. He was one of the first members of the New English Art Club, a founder member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and in 1897 was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and RA in 1909. His picture, "The Flower Girl", was bought in 1901 for the National Gallery of British Art. Shannon has paintings in the collection of a several British institutions including Sheffield, Derby Art Gallery, Glasgow Museum and Bradford Museum.

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

In 1904 he went with his wife and daughter Kitty for the first of three extended stays in America. There he was very prolific and had three one-man exhibitions at M Knoedler and Co in New York in 1905, 1906 and 1907. He was President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1910 and in 1922 renounced his U.S. citizenship in order to accept the Knighthood that was given him in recognition of his talents as a portrait artist. He died in 1923 at the age of 61. His work is represented in many major museums including the Metropolitan in New York.

(art-seeker.blogspot.com)