Sheard was an artist well-known in Oxford. He studied history at Magdalen, took an average degree and turned to painting, studying in Paris in the 1890s under Gustave Courtois and Jules Lefebvre at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which had fees lower even than the Académie Julian. He later specialised in Middle Eastern subjects. This lively and perhaps deliberately unfinished self-portrait painted in ‘verdaccio’ green underpaint is unsigned, and it belonged to the artist’s daughter.