George Johann Scharf

George Johann Scharf
Drawing of South American fossil skull of toxodon platensis for Charles Darwin, 1838
Born	1788 Bavaria
Died	1860 London
Nationality	German
Occupation	illustrator, water colour painter, draughtsman, and lithographer.

George Johann Scharf (1788–1860) was a water color painter, draughtsman and lithographer, and father of Sir George Scharf and Henry Scharf. He exhibited his paintings at the Royal Academy from 1817 to 1850, and was a member of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours.

George Scharf was born in Bavaria in 1788. After receiving little formal education, he went to Munich in 1804 where he studied for a time under Professor Hauber and copied pictures in the Pinakothek (Neue Pinakothek). King Maximilian noticed the young artist and purchased his copy of a portrait of Prince Eugène de Beauharnais. After working for a few years as a miniature painter and drawing master, Scharf learned the technique of lithography, which had been recently invented by his fellow countryman Alois Senefelder. Scharf left Germany and wandered for five years in France and the Low Countries. Caught up in the siege of Antwerp in 1814, Scharf escaped and joined the English army, where he was appointed lieutenant of baggage in the engineer department. In this capacity he was present at the Battle of Waterloo and accompanied the allied armies to Paris. While there, he drew some views of the Bois de Boulogne. Advised to try his fortune in England, Scharf left on New Year's Day 1816 and came to London, where he became a successful illustrator of ordinary life in England.

After Scharf arrived in London, he married Elizabeth Hicks, his landlady's sister, and lived in a house on St. Martin's Lane. At the time, London was a thriving center for lithography, and Scharf was able to make a respectable living off his topographical views and genre scenes, which were easily transformed into prints. Although George Scharf's life has not been as well-documented as that of his son, he has left to posterity over a thousand drawings, watercolours and lithographs that chronicle London life in the first half of the 19th Century. Most of these works are stored in the British Museum. It was Scharf's ambition to be "taken seriously as a ‘gentleman’ artist rather than as the ‘artisan’ printmaker on which is fame rests today.