Born in Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, in 1834, Edward Sheil moved to Cork at an early age, where he studied at the Cork School of Art, housed in this building. He exhibited his first painting in 1855 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and just two years later was appointed deputy headmaster of the drawing school. In 1859, Sheil became headmaster, replacing David Wilkie Rainbach, the godson and pupil of David Wilkie. The influence of Wilkie is evident in Sheil´s work, in that his paintings are intended to tell a story of both human ambition and human frailty. There is a simple, touching sentimentality in his work, and often a moral and intellectual message, that goes beyond the scene depicted. In Excelsior, painted in 1857, Sheil was demonstrating, as a new teacher at the School of Art, his capacity to produce a painting that could vie with the best work being done in London or Dublin. The painting depicts a young artist who has worked through the night, to complete a painting he hopes will be selected for exhibition the following day. There is touch of mystery in Excelsior, in that the unseen painting depicted on the easel is probably Excelsior itself, while the artist is probably a self-portrait of Sheil. The exhausted model, who has fallen asleep, is mentioned in accounts of the painting as suffering from tuberculosis, and the painting therefore also foreshadows her death.

Sheil has included in Exelsior many references to works of art he would have seen in 1857 in the collection of the School of Art and which can be still seen here today. On the left is the Graeco-Roman sculpture, the Discus Thrower, one of the Vatican casts presented to Cork in 1819 by the Prince Regent, and still displayed in the Sculpture Galleries. In the foreground is a replica of Ariadne, also in the Gallery´s collection. Behind the Discus Thrower can be seen Samuel Forde´s monumental Fall of the Rebel Angels, an ambitious painting that remained unfinished in 1828 when Forde died, aged just 23, of tuberculosis. The Fall of the Rebel Angels can also be seen displayed in the Crawford Sculpture galleries today.

Sheil´s Exelsior thus tells both the story of the Cork School of Art and of the Crawford Art Gallery collection. Until 1979, the School of Art and Gallery were housed in the same building, but in that year, the School moved to new premises in Sharman Crawford Street. Sheil´s painting is also autobiographical, in that it depicts the young and ambitious artist himself, delighted with his appointment, and anxious to make a good impression. However, there is also an understated narrative, with the shadow of death falling over the young couple, even as they struggle to make their way in life. Sheil was married and had two children, but he was chronically ill with tuberculosis. While he lived and worked through the years of the Great Famine, his paintings, such as Excelsior, while not alluding directly to this tragedy, do convey the extremes of despair and hope that were a part of everyday life in mid nineteenth-century Cork. After just twelve months or so, Sheil had to resign from his post as headmaster, due to ill health. He continued to paint, and to exhibit his work at the RHA, up to his death six years later, from tuberculosis.