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Lot Essay
Considered by many to be the father of the Taos art colony, Joseph Henry Sharp is celebrated for his detailed depictions of Native American life on the Plains and in the Southwest. Born in Ohio in 1859, Sharp attended the Cincinnati Art Academy, where he met fellow artist Henry Farny. Spurred by Farny’s success as a painter of Native American life, Sharp first visited Taos and the Pueblo Indians in 1893. Sharp’s experiences and illustrations from this trip, later published in Harper's Weekly, formed the basis of a career devoted to the American landscape and the people who lived there.
In 1905, Sharp built a studio he named Absarokee Hut on government land in Montana at Crow Agency. His repeated trips to the Absarokee Hut in the fall and winter to study the local tribes likely inspired Cheyenne Medicine Tepee. Executed around 1905, the present work is a great example of one of Sharp’s early paintings, depicting figures and teepees set against the expansive landscape of the High Plains. Sharp invites the viewer into the scene along a diagonal line of vision that leads deep into the composition to a distant teepee at far center right. A second diagonal originating in the lower right with the animal skull, and leading through the standing figure and leaning tree, provides balance.
The Impressionist-style brushwork in Cheyenne Medicine Tepee suggests the scene is a fleeting moment in time. Indeed, Sharp’s depictions of Native Americans helped to preserve and record a way of life that was rapidly changing. Sharp was deeply engaged with Native American culture and is widely lauded for his closely observed physiognomy, costume and interiors. He was an observer striving for an honest and quiet depiction of Native American frontier life, not the grandiose scenes of Western myth promoted by his predecessors. Sharp himself reflects, "I was always interested [in Native Americans] . . . It was the romance of youth, of boyhood, I suppose. Then when I came to know them I liked them for themselves. Perhaps they attracted me as subjects to paint because of their important historical value as the first Americans. Then the color of their costumes and dances, this no less attracted me." (as quoted in F. Fenn, The Beat of the Drum and the Whoop of the Dance: The Study of the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1983)
Surrounded by and living in union with the expansive terrain, the figures in Cheyenne Medicine Tepee underscore the harmony of man and nature--a theme established early in the canon of American art by Hudson River School founders Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. Cheyenne Medicine Tepee is a testament to the reverence Sharp felt for the Plains Indians and a wonderful example from one of the most storied artists of the West in the twentieth century.
In 1905, Sharp built a studio he named Absarokee Hut on government land in Montana at Crow Agency. His repeated trips to the Absarokee Hut in the fall and winter to study the local tribes likely inspired Cheyenne Medicine Tepee. Executed around 1905, the present work is a great example of one of Sharp’s early paintings, depicting figures and teepees set against the expansive landscape of the High Plains. Sharp invites the viewer into the scene along a diagonal line of vision that leads deep into the composition to a distant teepee at far center right. A second diagonal originating in the lower right with the animal skull, and leading through the standing figure and leaning tree, provides balance.
The Impressionist-style brushwork in Cheyenne Medicine Tepee suggests the scene is a fleeting moment in time. Indeed, Sharp’s depictions of Native Americans helped to preserve and record a way of life that was rapidly changing. Sharp was deeply engaged with Native American culture and is widely lauded for his closely observed physiognomy, costume and interiors. He was an observer striving for an honest and quiet depiction of Native American frontier life, not the grandiose scenes of Western myth promoted by his predecessors. Sharp himself reflects, "I was always interested [in Native Americans] . . . It was the romance of youth, of boyhood, I suppose. Then when I came to know them I liked them for themselves. Perhaps they attracted me as subjects to paint because of their important historical value as the first Americans. Then the color of their costumes and dances, this no less attracted me." (as quoted in F. Fenn, The Beat of the Drum and the Whoop of the Dance: The Study of the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1983)
Surrounded by and living in union with the expansive terrain, the figures in Cheyenne Medicine Tepee underscore the harmony of man and nature--a theme established early in the canon of American art by Hudson River School founders Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. Cheyenne Medicine Tepee is a testament to the reverence Sharp felt for the Plains Indians and a wonderful example from one of the most storied artists of the West in the twentieth century.