Joseph Henry Sharp, American
b. 1859, Bridgeport, OH; d. 1953, Pasadena, CA
Oil on canvas
The Crow are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.
Crow Indians are a Plains tribe, who speak the Crow language, part of the Missouri River Valley branch of Siouan languages. Of the 14,000 enrolled tribal members, an estimated 3,000 spoke the Crow language in 2007.
During the expansion into the West, the Crow people were allied with the United States against its neighbors and rivals, the Sioux and Cheyenne. In historical times, the Crow lived in the Yellowstone River valley, which extends from present-day Wyoming, through Montana and into North Dakota, where it joins the Missouri River.
Since the 19th century, Crow people have been concentrated on their reservation established south of Billings, Montana. Today, they also live in several major, mainly western, cities. Tribal headquarters are located at Crow Agency, Montana. The tribe operates the Little Big Horn College.
(Wikipedia)
Joseph Henry Sharp was an American painter and a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, of which he is considered the "Spiritual Father". Sharp was one of the earliest European-American artists to visit Taos, New Mexico, which he saw in 1893 with artist John Hauser. He painted American Indian portraits and cultural life, as well as Western landscapes. President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned him to paint the portraits of 200 Native American warriors who survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn. While working on this project, Sharp lived on land of the Crow Agency, Montana, where he built Absarokee Hut in 1905. Boosted by his sale of 80 paintings to Phoebe Hearst, Sharp quit teaching and began to paint full-time.
In 1909, he bought a former chapel in Taos to use as a studio, near the house of the artist E. Irving Couse. In 1912 he and his wife moved to the area full-time. He built a house with studio near the chapel. Both artists' homes and studios are part of the Eanger Irving Couse House and Studio—Joseph Henry Sharp Studios, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1881, Sharp traveled to Europe, where he studied for a year at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium.
(Wikipedia)
Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio
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