Joseph Henry Sharp (1859 - 1953) American

Gouache on Paper

Measure 5"in H x 3 1/2"in W and 11 3/4"in H x 9 3/4"in W with frame

Known for: Indian figure, landscape and still-life painting

Joseph H. Sharp was born in Bridgeport, Ohio. He saw his first Indians in Wheeling, West Virginia, just across the Ohio River. He took an instant interest in them even before he became an artist. Though completely deaf as a result of a childhood accident he never allowed it to handicap him. He was an avid traveller and a very prolific artist. He attended the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati, and later the Cincinnati Art Academy. In 1881 he went to Europe, studying with Charles Verlat in Antwerp and on successive trips, with Carl Marr in Munich and Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens in Paris. From 1892 to 1902 he taught the life class at the Cincinnati Art Academy during the winter, leaving his summers free for sketching trips which covered the entire West. Just prior to 1900, he went to the Sioux country in southeastern Montana. A year later, President Theodore Roosevelt had his Indian Commissioners build Sharp a studio and cabin at the Crow Agency on the old Custer battlefield. Sharp traveled throughout the Plains country doing hundreds of Indian paintings. In 1902, Sharp began spending several months each year in Taos, painting the Pueblo Indians. In 1909 he acquired a permanent studio there and in 1912, became a charter member of the Taos Society of Artists. Sharp's faithful accuracy in depicting the differences between various tribes--in facial structures, costumes, artifacts and ceremonials--make his work as highly prized by anthropologists as by art lovers. Nearly 100 of his paintings are owned by the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkley. Others are in the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian and in museums throughout the country.

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