"ON The Seashore" By ~ George Elgar Hicks ~ 1824 - 1914.

George Elgar Hicks

Born on March 13, 1824 in Lymington, Hampshire, England, George Elgar Hicks was the second son of a wealthy magistrate, who along with fellow painter William Powell Frith, became amongst the most admired and popular painters of the Victorian era. Hicks parents encouraged him to become a doctor, leading him to study medicine at University College, London from 1840-1842. However after three years of "arduous and disagreeable study", Hicks began training as an artist. In 1843 Hick's attended Sass's Academy and by 1844 had entered the Royal Academy Schools. Hicks then married Maria Hariss in 1847 with whom he would eventually have eight children. In 1859, Hicks exhibited his first large genre painting at the Royal Academy, following Frith's recent commercial success in painting similar scenes. Hicks continued to paint genre scenes to much acclaim throughout the 1860's before shifting to historical scenes, literary scenes,and portraiture in the 1870's and 1880's. Hicks died a month before the declaration of World War I, in 1914. Paintings of his can be found in the Tate Museum in London.