Claude Andrew Calthrop, a noted British painter of genre and historical subjects, had his artistic training at the Royal Academy Schools in South Kensington and at Marlborough House. His teacher and mentor was John Charles Lewis Sparkes (British, fl. 1856- 1907).
Calthrop maintained a studio in London and was a frequent contributor to the leading exhibitions of his time. His paintings were shown at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street. He began exhibiting in 1867 and continued until 1893, the year of his death at the age of forty-eight. The paintings he showed at the Royal Academy included portraits and social realist subjects, particularly involving seamstresses. One of the leading art critics of the later part of the nineteenth century in Great Britain, John Ruskin, praised his painting "Getting Better" which he showed at the Royal Academy in 1875.
He also lived and had a studio in Paris for a time, and it was there that he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Francais.
