Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harrison, George Henry
HARRISON, GEORGE HENRY (1816–1846), water-colour painter, born in Liverpool in 1816, was the second son of Mary Harrison [q. v.], the flower-painter. He came to London at the age of fourteen, and improved his practice and pocket by working for the dealers. Subsequently he was engaged in making anatomical and other medical drawings and illustrations, and in studying anatomy at the Hunterian school in Windmill Street. He derived much benefit from the advice and encouragement of John Constable, R.A., who showed him great kindness, criticising his sketches, and urging him continually to study nature closely. In 1840 he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, and in 1845 he was elected an associate of the Old Water-Colour Society in Pall Mall. A painful disease forced him to travel in search of health. In Paris, as he had done in London and its neighbourhood, he formed classes for out-of-door sketching, and was very successful. His works were chiefly landscapes and domestic scenes, and the influence of Watteau and Boucher is discernible in some of his paintings. He seldom worked in oil. He made drawings of the fancy ball scenes and other festivities at Buckingham Palace for the ‘Illustrated London News.’ But his strength lay in landscape, with luxurious foliage and figures well introduced. The sketches of ‘Fontainebleau’ and ‘St. Cloud,’ which he executed in the last year of his life, show his mastery of his art. An example of his work may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. According to Graves he exhibited between 1840 and 1846 twenty-seven pictures: fourteen at the Royal Academy, two at the British Institution, eleven at Suffolk Street. He died of aneurism on 20 Oct. 1846.
[Bryan's Dict. 1885; Ottley's Dict. 1866; Redgrave's Dict. 1874; Graves's Dict. of Artists who have exhibited.]