Virginia Guild Sharp met and married Philadelphia-based zoologist and philanthropist Dr. Benjamin Sharp on Nantucket. A close friend of fellow island artists Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin and Annie Barker Folger, Sharp studied with Eastman Johnson for several years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and later became a pupil of Thomas Eakins. With the demands of a growing family, Sharp turned from painting to portrait photography, and garnered numerous prestigious awards in Philadelphia and Chicago. Her Head of a Young Girl won a blue ribbon at the Chicago Salon of 1900 and was the first photograph purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago for its permanent collection
