Joseph Henry Sharp

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Joseph Henry Sharp around 1910.

Joseph Henry Sharp (born September 27, 1859 in Bridgeport , Ohio , † August 29, 1953 in Pasadena , California ) was an American painter.

Sharp was one of the first American artists to visit Taos in New Mexico in 1893 , along with John Hauser . He became a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists and is widely regarded as the "Spiritual Father" of the same. He painted portraits of Indians and scenes from their cultural life as well as West American landscapes. President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned him to paint the portraits of 200 Indian warriors who survived the Battle of Little Bighorn . While working on this project, Sharp lived on land owned by the Crow Agency , Montana , where he built the Absarokee Hut in 1905 . Secured by the sale of 80 of his paintings to Phoebe Hearst , Sharp gave up classes and began painting full-time.

In 1909, he bought a former chapel in Taos near the artist Eanger Irving Couse's apartment to use as a studio. In 1912 he moved to the area with his wife. He built a house with a studio near the chapel. The ensemble of these buildings by both artists is part of the Eanger Irving Couse House and Studio — Joseph Henry Sharp Studios , which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places .

Life

Youth and education

Sharp was born on September 27, 1859 in Bridgeport, Ohio. His parents were Irish immigrants . His father ran a trade. From an early age, Sharp was fascinated by anything to do with Indians. He almost drowned in a swimming accident once. His friends took him out of the water and carried him home, believing he was dead. His mother managed to resuscitate him, but his hearing remained permanently damaged and he became completely deaf. Therefore, he had to learn lip reading and always carried a writing board with him.

Sharp's father died when he was twelve years old. Soon after, the boy started working in a nail factory to support the family financially. At the age of 14, the loss of his hearing made further schooling impossible. He dropped out of school and moved to Cincinnati , Ohio, where he lived and worked with an aunt to support himself and still send money to his mother. He briefly studied at the McMicken School of Design , but soon moved to the Cincinnati Art Academy .

In 1881 Sharp traveled to Europe, where he spent a year at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen) in Antwerp , Belgium .

He returned to the United States in 1883 and made his first trip to the American West, where he visited the states of New Mexico , Arizona , California, and Wyoming . It was around this time that he began sketching members of the Pueblo , Umatilla , Klickitat , Shoshone , and Ute tribes.

In 1885 he traveled to Europe again with John Hauser , another artist from Cincinnati, who studied with him at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . Sharp deepened his studies at The Académie Julian in Paris and in the 1890s with Frank Duveneck in Italy.

Artistic career

Prayer to the spirit of the Ox. Blackfoot ceremony .

In 1890, Sharp founded the Cincinnati Art Club with twelve other artists from Cincinnati .

He married Addie and taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy. During this time he mainly painted portraits of members of the local upper class.

In 1893 he made his second trip to the American West, accompanied by his friend John Hauser. They first visited Taos, New Mexico, because Sharp had been commissioned by Harper's Weekly to produce illustrations of Indian life in the Taos Pueblo . The landscape of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the culture of the Indians sparked his enthusiasm, which he was able to transfer to his colleagues Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips at the Académie Julian over the next year .

Sharp continued to teach in Cincinnati until 1902. In the meantime he made another trip to Montana , where he camped on the battlefield of the Battle of Little Bighorn . There he painted scenes of the life of the Indians and portraits of members of the Plains Indians , especially the Crow , Sioux and Nez Percé . In 1900 these portraits were exhibited in Washington, DC , and the Smithsonian Institution acquired eleven of the portraits.

With this, Sharp caught the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt , who became interested and commissioned him to paint the portraits of 200 Indian warriors who had survived the Battle of Little Big Horn. In order to stay in the area, Sharp apparently negotiated a private arrangement with Samuel Reynolds, the agent of the US Indian Commission (Crow Agency), and received permission to build a log cabin on state land. The log cabin was built near the confluence of the Little Bighorn River and Bighorn River . In fact, the Crow Agency owned the cabin. Sharp and his wife built it in 1905 with the help of labor services from the neighboring prison, organized and overseen by Reynolds.

Sharp called the hut "Absarokee Hut". It was a one-room hut with an extension shed and sleeping facilities and the kitchen. The center beam of the hut was high enough (5 m or 16.5 ft ) to support a balcony on one side, where Sharp hung animal skins and Indian blankets to shield the additional space and use it as a guest room. The Sharps furnished the hut with furniture from the American Arts and Crafts Movement and decorated it with their collection of Native American artifacts, including Navajo rugs , a buffalo robe, shields, pottery and baskets. The cabin was even featured in The Craftsman magazine . Sharp lived and worked there rent-free and was even able to purchase the hut in 1922.

Phoebe Hearst acquired 80 of Sharp's Indian paintings. This enabled him to give up lessons and move permanently to the Absarokee Hut, where he only painted. Hearst commissioned another 75 portraits and pictures of each of the great Great Plains tribes. Hearst's complete collection of 155 Sharp pictures was ultimately given to the University of California , Berkeley .

Sharp also lived in New Mexico during the summers . In 1909 he acquired a former chapel of the Los Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno in Taos to use it as a studio. With that he was close to Irving Couse's house. In 1912, the Sharps finally settled permanently in Taos, where Addie died in 1913. Because of the special landscape and light of New Mexico, Sharp changed some of his techniques. Although he was trained as an academic painter and usually worked in his studio, he began painting in the open air . In 1915 he founded the Taos Society of Artists together with Couse and four other artists . They worked as a sales cooperative to make Taos known internationally as an artist colony. The Society existed until 1927.

Winter in Hawaii

From 1930 Sharp spent several winters in Hawaii with his second wife Louise . Sharp only painted there for pleasure. At the request of a local gallery owner, Sharp agreed to show some of his works. The Sharps hibernated in Hawaii for the next eight years, except in 1931 and 1933 when the pair spent the winters in Mexico and the Orient.

Appreciation

The Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa , Oklahoma showed a retrospective of Sharp's work in 1949. The museum also currently has the largest collection of his works.

Death and legacy

Sharp closed the Taos studio when he was 93 years old and traveled to California. Although he had planned to return the following year, he fell ill and died on August 29, 1953 in Pasadena , CA. In his life, Sharp had made about 10,500 works in oils , pastels, and watercolors, as well as drawings and prints. 7,800 of these works deal with Indian motifs, 3,200 of which are portraits. As a painter, Sharp became a historian of the West and helped document a vanishing culture.

Studio

Sharp built a two-story house with a studio next to the chapel in Taos. This historic studio is maintained as part of The Couse / Sharp Historic Site at 146 Kit Carson Road by The Couse Foundation , which offers public tours. The buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Forrest Fenn: Teepee Smoke: A New Look into the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp . One Horse Land And Cattle Co., Santa Fe 2007.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953) . In: Taos and Santa Fe Painters .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Peters, Gerald III (Ed.): The Taos Society of Artist: Masters and Masterpieces . Gerald Peters Gallery, 1998, ISBN 0-935037-78-0 .
  4. ↑ Doris Ostrander Dawdy: Artists of the American West: A Biographical Dictionary . Sage Books, Chicago 1974.
  5. ^ G. Frederick Wright: John Hauser . In: Representative Citizens of Ohio: Memorial — Biographical . Memorial, Cleveland 1914, pp. 333-336.
  6. ^ Mary Sayre Haverstock, Jeannette Mahoney Vance, Brian L. Meggitt, Jeffrey Weidman: Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary . Kent State University Press, 2000, ISBN 9780873386166 , p. 892.
  7. ↑ a b c d Joseph Henry Sharp: 'Absarokee Hut' . In: CenterOfTheWest.org . Buffalo Bill Historical Center.
  8. ^ Rick Newby: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: The Rocky Mountain Region . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 978-0-313-32817-6 , pp. 37-38.
  9. ^ Yellowstone Art Museum: The Works of Joseph Henry Sharp . In: TFAOI.org . Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc ..
  10. ^ Avis Berman: Art: Taos Landscapes. Pioneer Artists Depict the Grandeur of New Mexico . In: Architectural Digest , March 1987: 158-163.
  11. ↑ The Couse-Sharp Historic Site . In: Couse-Sharp.org . Couse Foundation.

literature

  • Forrest Fenn: The Beat of the Drum and the Whoop of the Dance: A Study of the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp . Fenn Publishing Co., Santa Fe 1983.
  • Forrest Fenn: Teepee Smoke: A New Look into the Life and Works of Joseph Henry Sharp. Pt. 5. In: Western Art Collector. February 2008, Medicine Man Gallery. With a photo of the interior of his studio in Taos.
  • Thomas E. Minckler: In Poetic Silence, The Floral Paintings of Joseph Henry Sharp . Settlers West Galleries, Tucson, Arizona 2010.

Web links

Commons : Joseph Henry Sharp  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

painting

personal data
SURNAME Sharp, Joseph Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Bridgeport (Ohio) , Ohio , United States
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1953
Place of death Pasadena , California , California