"[5] They eventually made it to America in a move that echoed the fashion of English artists who took advantage of the growing demand for portraiture in the New World.

Around 1797, while they were living in Philadelphia, Ellen first began to draw portraits professionally in order to supplement the family's income.

They lived and worked in Philadelphia and New York City, and traveled through New England in a specially constructed carriage that carried the family, their collection, and their equipment.

After settling the will, Ellen, Rolinda, and James Jr. returned to England, and Felix elected to remain in America, pursuing a career as a portrait artist.

[10] Ellen's itinerant life was over after her husband's death, and she settled permanently in Clifton, where she, James Jr. and Rolinda rented an apartment.

Rolinda's career took on a different and more ambitious direction, for she began to paint large portraits and complicated group scenes in oils.

Of her loss, Ellen wrote to her friend, Miss Sarjeant: that in my recent losses, my feelings must have been agonizing; for you knew how uniformly exemplary were the affectionate kindness of my dear highly gifted son & daughter to their mother, how devoted she was, placing all her happiness in them....[11]She was near 72 years of age when she wrote those words.

[12] Letters, legal papers, bank and account books relating to James and Ellen Sharples and their family are held at Bristol Archives (Ref.

[14] The income from Ellen's and her children's paintings made the family affluent, and she wrote in her diary: Copies were frequently required; these I undertook, and was far successful, as to have as many commissions as I could execute; they were thought equal to the original, price the same: we lived in good style associating in the first society.After 1810, Ellen no longer mentions her own work in her diaries, yet the family continued to practice as portrait painters in Bristol.

From the listing in a book of the Royal Academy exhibitors one can see that Ellen Sharples exhibited her works in 1807, when the family had moved back to England for a short time.