Joseph Henry Sharp 1859-1953

Van Vechten-Lineberry Collection, Taos, New Mexico (acquired directly from the artist)
By descent in the family
Private Collection, Texas
Fenn Enterprises, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Acquired from the above

Forrest Fenn, The Beat of the Drum and the Whoop of the Dance, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1983, no. 1700, p. 324
Forrest Fenn, Teepee Smoke: A New Look Into the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2007, no. 1700, p. 326, illustrated in color p. 75

Very good condition, unlined; under UV: some small spots fluoresce, but appear to be original pigment. Triangular area in top right area of doorway fluoreseces, which may be possible retouching.
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Gift from Cochiti, painted in 1936, typifies Joseph Henry Sharp's deep fascination with the Native Americans and the objects crucial to their existence and cultural heritage.  Sharp first encountered the Indian through James Fenimore Cooper's tales of the "noble red man," which he read as a young boy in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Years later, when he encountered a delegation of Indians delayed at the local rail station on their way to Washington, Sharp had the opportunity to view first-hand the inspiration for Cooper's vivid stories.  In 1883, at the age of 24, Sharp made his first visit to the American West, traveling to Santa Fe and neighboring towns to paint the local Pueblo Indians.  Inspired by this visit and a keen awareness of the steady erosion of the Native American lifestyle, Sharp set out to create a visual record of the Indian cultures that had captivated him during his travels. Ten years later, Sharp received a commission from Harper's Weekly for a trip to Taos, New Mexico to document its environs.  The village and its people mesmerized Sharp, and after several returns, he eventually opened his own studio there in 1909.  By 1912, Sharp made Taos his fulltime residence and founded the Taos Society of Artists along with fellow painters Bert Phillips, Ernest Blumenschein, Oscar Berninghaus, E. Irving Couse and W. Herbert Dunton.

Though his Taos peers also painted Indian life, Sharp's subjects are distinguished by his sensitive and insightful understanding of the diminishing Indian culture. Deaf as a result of a childhood accident, Sharp was mild mannered and quiet.  His subtle demeanor contrasted with other frontiersmen the Indians encountered, and earned him respect from the tribes with which he occasionally lived.  Patricia Janis Broder writes, "Throughout his life Sharp was the spiritual brother of the Indian people. A quiet, serene, and patient man, like many of the Indian people he painted, he possessed an inner strength and stoic philosophy. He was able to accept the inevitable. He was intuitively perceptive and was capable of understanding the inner feelings of the individual" (Taos: A Painter's Dream, 1980, p. 52). Insistent on painting directly from life, Sharp's  intimacy with his subjects allowed him to carefully observe their daily activities, as he sought to depict accurately the costumes and objects associated with the various tribes.  His intense interest in his subjects included describing their histories and personal idiosyncrasies on the back of his canvases. Sharp's skill in capturing the likeness' of the Indians and his ethnographic interest in their cultural traditions, costumes and artifacts eventually earned him the nickname "The Anthropologist." 

As he developed close personal friendships with the tribesmen, he frequently used the same models, painting their portraits numerous times. Broder notes, "[Sharp] painted hundreds of portraits of Indians, choosing as his subjects outstanding leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as the men, women, and children who participated in the daily life of a transitional Indian world. He knew his subjects personally and recorded not only their physical likenesses but also their human strengths and weaknesses. He portrayed them as individuals who shared a cultural and political history but in their personal lives had experienced success and failure, joy and sorrow. His paintings illustrate his compassion for and understanding of the twentieth-century Indians, who unlike their ancestors were forced to live in a rapidly changing, alien world, yet were determined to retain their tribal identity" (Taos: A Painter's Dream, p. 37). The success of Sharp's mission to record the Indian tribes and culture was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution in 1900 when they purchased eleven of his Indian portraits. The curator of Anthropology at the Smithsonian later wrote to Sharp, "I regard you as among the first, if not the very first painter of Indian portraits in the country. The exactness with which you portray the physiognomy and the costumes of the people is most commendable" (Forrest Fenn, Teepee Smoke: A New Look Into the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, 2007, p. 138).

In Gift from Cochiti, Sharp has captured an intimate moment between two women in which a gift is presented.  Two other women observe this ritual, underscoring the importance of the exchange, while a man stands in the doorway off to the left, watching this feminine gathering from a distance. Sharp carefully rendered each outfit and accessory in intricate detail, noting the bold tones favored by the Pueblo Indians. Each model was a member of the local Taos pueblo. The four women from left to right are likely Agapito, Tonita, Leaf Down and Crucita. Posing for as many as sixty-five of his paintings Crucita was one of Sharp's favorite models. The shadowy figure in the doorway is likely Alonzo, the husband of Agapito, whose pose Sharp duplicated from an old photograph.