Joseph Henry Sharp, (1859-1953)

Evening Council 25 x 30in framed 34 1/2 X 39 1/2in

Evening Council
signed and inscribed 'J H SHARP TAOS' (lower right)
oil on canvas
25 x 30in
framed 34 1/2 X 39 1/2in

Provenance
Biltmore Galleries, Los Angeles, California.
Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
J.N. Bartfield Galleries, New York, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited
Salt Lake City, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West, February 15 – August 11, 2013.

Literature
F. Fenn, The Beat of the Drum and the Whoop of the Dance: A Study of the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Santa Fe, Fenn Publishing Co., 1983, no. 1436, pp. 211, 322, illustrated.
F. Fenn, Teepee Smoke: A New Look Into the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Santa Fe, One Horse Land and Cattle Co., 2007, p. 52, illustrated.

We wish to thank Dr. Marie Watkins for her kind assistance with cataloging the lot.

As Patricia Broder makes clear in her research The Taos Society of Artists did not create a Taos school of painting. From the beginning each member of the group brought a unique vision and expression – even when pursuing similar subject matter. Joseph Henry Sharp was nicknamed "The Anthropologist". By means of his portraits Sharp studied the Native peoples around him as well as their artifacts and ceremonies. He devoted his artistic abilities to document and preserve a rapidly disappearing version of the world. Broder writes in Taos: A Painter's Dream, that Sharp's close relationships with the people he depicted allowed him to: "evoke a nostalgia for the past, a nostalgia that serves as a common bond between the artist and subject. These paintings are poetic tributes to the dignity of the Indian people and to the serenity and beauty of traditional Indian life." 1

With Evening Council Sharp brings his contemplative, deliberate and dramatically lit portrait style into the outdoors. He superimposes the staged interior on the wild exterior with virtuoso skill. The light effects are most prominently writ on the figures and the boulders that frame the scene. The seated figure in red is bathed in light while the standing white robed figure at right dramatically takes advantage of the light from the unseen fire. Between them the smoke is masterfully scumbled onto the painting's surface without interfering with the warm pool of orange and yellow that centers the composition. Above the heads of the figures the smoke becomes part of the trees receding anonymously into the landscape. Similarly, the figure to the far right (out of the firelight) is an active observer still outside the inner circle like the view of the painting. He recedes into the landscape just like the smoke. The firelight also creates the spectacular tree shadows that lay on the rocks. These shadows are carefully delineated to the right and left of the white robed central figure like the wings of a gigantic bird. These light techniques contrast beautifully with the rhythmic vertical strokes on the grasses and boulders not directly lit by the fire.

At Sharp's funeral, fellow Taos artist Ernest Blumenschein expressed the enduring appeal of Sharp's work, saying, "some of these paintings will live as long as paint lasts on canvas. He was the reporter, the recorder of the absolute integrity of the American Indian...He will go down in history with Russell and Remington and the few early artists of Indian life. In trying to arrive at real values in our group of Taos artists, I sometimes wonder if our ambitious attempts along high art lines will be worth as much to the world as the honest unvarying recordings of this simple man, Henry Sharp." Evening Council allows us the viewer a privileged glimpse of the serene, beautiful, and traditional life.

1 P.J. Broder, Taos: A Painter's Dream, New York, New York Graphic Society, 1980, p. 37.