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Joseph H. Henry Sharp Catalogue

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Sunset Dance - Ceremony to the Sun

Sharp made a list of paintings he sent to San Diego's Panama-California Exposition in 1915.  Included on that list was a painting titled The Sunset Dance which he indicated as measuring 30 x 40 in. (Sharp Papers) That large version, which never seems to have reached San Diego, was sold just after the fair to the oilman J. S. Cullinan of Houston, TX. This smaller version may have been inspired by that earlier, larger canvas.

 

This painting or another variation titled The Sunset Dance, Taos (related image, #493) was first shown at the exhibition, Indian and Western Paintings held at the Traxel Art Galleries in Cincinnati in early December, 1924. In 1925 Sharp displayed it at the Nicholson Art Gallery in Pasadena (Star News, 3/28/1925), with the TSA at the Springfield Art Association in MA in 1925-26 and at The Schroeder Galleries, Pasadena in 1927.  (Sharp Papers)

 

A smaller study of the view without figures exists (see related image, #239b). Sharp exhibited one of the versions of the larger work again in 1927 at the Schroeder Galleries in Pasadena. Another variation, picturing Hunting Son silhouetted in front of the pueblo scene, can be seen in #623.

Sunset Dance - Ceremony to the Sun

Alternate Title:

The Sunset Dance (Taos Pueblo)

Record ID: 239

Date: 1924

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 1/8 x 30 in.

Signature / Inscription: LR: J.H.SHARP. 1924

Owner: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Accession Number: 1991.205.15


Provenance: The artist; [?]; Arvin Gottlieb; present owner by gift

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.