Joseph Henry Sharp (American, 1859-1953) attributed: oil on paper laid to board, signed bottom left and verso, framed. Joseph Henry (JH) Sharp was the premier painter of the American southwest, venturing westward before many of his notable contemporaries. Best known for his sensitive depictions of Native Americans from Montana down to Arizona, Sharp is regarded as a pioneers of his generation.

After a near-death drowning accident which rendered him nearly deaf, Sharp was forced to leave school at 14 and relocate to Cincinnati to in order to provide for his family. While residing in Cincinnati, Sharp enrolled briefly in the McMicken School of Design before formally enrolling in the Cincinnati Art Academy.

In 1881, Sharp traveled to Antwerp for a year where he enrolled in Royal Academy of Art to further hone his painting abilities. Upon returning to the United States in 1883, he ventured westward for the first time, visiting New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Wyoming, where he began painting the Native Americans that had interested him since childhood.

In 1890, after returning to Cincinnati, Sharp co-founded the Cincinnati Art Society and was hired for an academic position at his alma mater, the Cincinnati Art Academy. Forever intrigued by the American West and its residents, he returned over the next decades often to paint portraits of members of the Plains Tribes, many of which still remain in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Around this time Teddy Roosevelt began taking interest in his work and requested that Sharp paint 200 portraits of the surviving Native American warriors of the Battle of Little Big Horn. Capitalizing on this acclaim, Sharp requested permission to erect a one-room cabin on Crow Land in Montana. By 1905, his cabin was fully realized and he relocated to Montana with his wife, Addie.

Although he was happiest in Montana, he found the winters to be unbearable and began wintering in Taos, New Mexico, going so far as purchasing a studio there in 1909. The Sharp family relocated permanently to Taos in 1912, where Addie passed a year later. Two years after Addie’s passing, Sharp, along with a group of his peers, founded the Taos Society of Artists, a commercial artists cooperative that established Taos as an art hub.

Sharp passed away in 1953 but left along an outstanding legacy of over 10,500 documented works, the 7,800 of which focused on the Native Americans he so admired. The piece we are offering is a spectacular example of the sympathetic treatment of Native Americans for which JH Sharp was regarded.

Dimensions: 8 x 10" board, 14 1/2 x 16 1/2" frame

Private estate, reported as purchased in Taos, NM.

Very good condition, with minor retouching. Paper laid to paperboard, with image extended onto the board on the left edge (c. 1930-40?). The signature on the front appears to have been added, perhaps at the time when the paper was laid to board.

NOTE: If documentation is not listed, the lot is sold without documents.

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