The son of George and Eleanor Harrison of Canterbury, Kent, George Harrison was baptised on 28th January 1840. The 1851 and 1861 censuses show their address as 45 St George Street. He enrolled, aged 19, as a student at the Royal Academy Schools in 1858, living at 5 Grove Place, Camberwell Grove, and he was still noted as a student in the 1861 census (for his parents’ address). By late 1861 he had done portraits of his local-councillor father, of an African man, 'painted from life' (possibly an RA model), also the head of a woman in Grecian costume and An Arab Chief, in the dress of his tribe. In 1862 he showed these as examples to gain two portrait commissions from the East Kent (now Canterbury) Farmers' Club and one from the Sheriff of Canterbury.
Harrison was a founder member of the (now-Royal) Cambrian Academy in 1882 and died at Min Afon, aged 70, on 9th June 1910, having been suddenly taken ill while relaxing after finishing a painting that day.
His recorded portraits by 1862 were of: his father, Councillor George Harrison; an African Man; an Arab Chief; in 1862, Charles Neame, Chairman of the East Kent Farmers’ Club/Canterbury Farmers' Club; Henry Mount Esq. of Nackington, Vice Chairman of the same; and Councillor Bartlett Allen Chambers. At her death in 1992, Harrison’s granddaughter Kathleen Holland Roberts bequeathed to the RCA the early portrait of an African, A Cottage Landscape, with Cattle, and two miniatures attributed to him.
Summarised from Art UK's Art Detective discussion 'Can anyone identify the sitter or the artist in this portrait of a bearded man wearing a red cloak?'
Text source: Art Detective
