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Joseph H. Henry Sharp Catalogue

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The Chief

This painting, titled The Chief's Sweat Teepee, was first exhibited in 1908 at Cincinnati's Closson Galleries and in 1909 at the Fine Arts Institute in Kansas City with an asking price off $1,500. It also traveled to Indianapolis and St. Louis at that time. According to extant sales records, Sharp last exhibited it at the University Club in Cincinnati in 1912 and the Hotel Gibson in 1916.

 

Inscribed on brass plate on frame: "The Sweat Lodge, J.H. Sharp." This painting, carrying the title of The Sweat Tent, was sold to Philip Cole through the Milch Gallery in New York for $1,800 in October 1926. (Milch Gallery sales records, Archives of American Art)  According to Sharp's sales ledgers, he received $1,150 for this work that he referred to as Chief's Sweat Teepee. (Sharp Papers)

 

Sharp produced and copyrighted a photogravure print of this painting in 1908.  It is titled Preparing the Chief's Sweat Teepee. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Forrest Fenn, 2012. (related image, #426 a)

 

This is also probably the painting, The Chief's Sweat Teepee, that appeared in The Closson Galleries exhibition Pictures of the West in Cincinnati in April 1908 and at the Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis in May of that year. In 1912, still unsold, it was exhibited at the University Club in Cincinnati in 1912. In a notice of that show, a reviewer saw humor in the canvas with "the squaw bossing the preparations of the men's sweat-bath." (Sharp Papers)

 

 

The Chief's Sweat Teepee; [The Sweat Lodge]

Alternate Title:

 Preparing the Chief's Sweat Teepee; Squaws Preparing Sweat Teepee; The Sweat Tent

Record ID: 426

Date: ca. 1908; [1890]

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 29 3/16 x 41 1/4 in., framed

Signature / Inscription: LR: J.H.SHARP

Owner: Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK

Accession Number: 0137.302


Provenance:

The artist; Milch Gallery, New York; Dr. Philip G. Cole, Brooklyn, NY, 1926; Thomas Gilcrease, Tulsa, OK, 1947; The Thomas Gilcrease Foundation, Tulsa, OK; present owner by gift 1955

Related

Created concurrently with Peter Hassrick's 2018 Whitney West publication The Life & Art of Joseph Henry Sharp, this online catalogue highlights more than 700 works by J.H. Sharp that are held in public collections.