Julia Graydon Sharpe

As a young girl, Sharpe attended local private schools in Indianapolis as well as the Chegaray Institute, in Philadelphia, for instruction in voice.

She returned to Indianapolis at age twenty-one and enrolled in Love and Gookins' First Indiana School of Art from 1878 to 1880.

Sharpe's art career underwent a hiatus as her father struggled through the depression of the 1870s, and she pursued social activities.

During this time, she studied alongside artists such as H. Siddons Mowbray, Kenyon Cox, Walter Appleton Clarke, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

In the fall of 1898, Sharpe took her six-year-old niece with her on a sketching trip to the mountains of West Virginia.