Introduction

Joseph Henry Sharp’s Pursuit of Inspiration

By Karen B. McWhorter
Scarlett Curator of Western American Art
Whitney Western Art Museum
Buffalo Bill Center of the West

Taos, New Mexico, is nearly eight hundred miles from Crow Agency in southern Montana. Even the most direct route between the two locales would make for a lengthy road trip. The Rocky Mountains span the distance and extend well beyond in both directions, limiting the number of possible travel itineraries one might consider. But, like a series of massive cairns set in place by some primordial giant, the cordillera reassuringly points the way. Today, a scenic drive from New Mexico to Montana can be navigated with relative ease by car (and, certainly, easier still by plane). In the late nineteenth century, before the advent of the automobile and its widespread use in the American West, the burgeoning railroad network facilitated the journey. By the 1860s, lines spread like arteries throughout the western region and were an integral mode of transportation. One could ride the rails, shoulder to shoulder with other pioneering souls, to any number of growing communities west of the Mississippi and, beyond city centers, jump on a branch line to more remote destinations. Past the tracks’ farthest reaches, however, hearty travelers had little choice but to bump along rutted roads via buckboard, horseback, or the stage.

Artist Joseph Henry Sharp (1859–1953) was one such hearty traveler who frequently undertook the trip between Taos and Crow Agency, often adding a third leg to Pasadena, California. Despite the laborious nature of travel throughout the American West at the turn of the century, no journey was too long or arduous for Sharp, an inveterate wanderer with an adventurous spirit. Sharp was the type to describe traversing 150 mountainous miles by wagon in just one week as a “wonderful experience.” Not all his western excursions were so taxing, though; Sharp passed many comfortable commutes in the buffet, smoking, or library cars of the Great Northern or the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (AT&SF) railways. In 1916 he reflected that, for many years, he had spent $150 to $200 annually in fares on the AT&SF alone. At that time, a ticket from Pasadena to Santa Fe was around $30, and from Denver to San Francisco $80. Bearing in mind these prices and acknowledging that Sharp frequently traveled on other lines as well, one gets a good sense of Sharp’s peripatetic lifestyle. But travel was not just enjoyable and entertaining for Sharp; it was the means by which he honed his artistic talents and found the ideal subjects to match his skill.

Had Sharp spent his career close to home in the Midwest—had he been a little less ambitious and adventurous—he might have enjoyed success as a portraitist and art instructor, a post he took up in 1892 and for which he was well suited. Perhaps his main influence would have remained his early mentor Frank Duveneck, from whom he might have adopted a secondhand academic style based on the Munich mode. Had Sharp stayed in the Midwest, his aesthetic and subjects may have wholly reflected European trends. But Sharp did not stay in the Midwest. Instead, he sought the world as his classroom, and ultimately endeavored to create uniquely American art. As the authors of this catalogue convincingly suggest, Sharp’s sojourns in Europe proved instrumental in the artist’s development, and his later residencies in Montana and New Mexico were transformative.

Abiding a teacher’s schedule during the early chapters of his professional career, Sharp traveled predominately during the summer, venturing west for the first time in 1883 and then with frequency for a decade beginning in 1893. In 1903, he and his wife, Addie, established residence on Crow Agency, a jumping-off point from which to visit communities among the Northern Plains tribes, commune with artists working in the region, and explore the windswept, yet starkly beautiful terrain of Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming. The two would arrive in time for Crow Fair in the fall and stay on through early winter, at which time they would depart for California. They spent summers in Taos.

And so, like birds undertaking a reverse migration, the Sharps spent colder months in the North and warmer months in the Southwest. The biting chill of Montana winters did not dissuade Sharp, but rather inspired him. Undeterred by subzero temperatures, he worked to perfect snow scenes and Indian portraits in firelit tipi interiors, two picture types for which he would become famous. Without distraction, he painted at an almost feverish pace and produced enough work to populate group exhibitions throughout the United States and circulate solo shows. Sharp’s compulsion to create prevailed over shivering hands and congealing paint, until the early 1920s when the harsh climate began to take too great a toll on the artist’s declining health.

From his first trip to New Mexico, it became clear that the Southwest would provide a lifetime of inspiration. The region’s appealing qualities were many: the beauty of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and surrounding arroyos and desert; the milder climate (perhaps mild only in comparison to Montana); a greater number of willing and more affordable models; and a growing artists’ community. The latter of these attractions he helped create; Sharp was a founding member of the famed Taos Society of Artists, the first significant association of American artists working in the West.

In both Montana and New Mexico, Sharp traveled throughout the countryside in search of fodder for his canvases, but also seeking outdoor adventure [Plate i.1]. A plein air painting excursion would often also involve a cast or two in a trout stream or an invigorating hike. Sharp’s life was a string of long, fulfilling days. He rarely stood still, except to paint, and was actively recreating outdoors into his seventies. Sharp was an energetic and curious man, whose interest in all things new and exciting kept him traveling around the world and crisscrossing the American West. As he went, he collected souvenirs, made sketches, and took notes and photographs to draw upon for inspiration when he returned to one of his studios. Sharp amassed an especially large collection of Plains Indian and Pueblo material culture. He treasured these artifacts for more than their practical application as props for his paintings. For him they represented the ingenuity of their makers, peoples whose traditional ways of life were becoming increasingly threatened. Like many artists of his and earlier eras, Sharp shared the belief that the West as he knew it was drastically changing in the face of immigration and industrialization. His perceptions of the region and its peoples were informed by popular representations by authors such as James Fenimore Cooper and artists such as George Catlin (whose mission to preserve the likenesses of Native peoples on canvas Sharp emulated) and Henry Farny. He later witnessed firsthand the adversities faced by the indigenous cultures of the Northern Plains and the Southwest.

Sharp’s affinity for collecting art and artifacts was shared by many of his predecessors and peers, including Frederic Remington and Alexander Phimister Proctor, and later by W. H. D. Koerner. Each of these artists actively amassed personal collections of western memorabilia, portions of which now reside at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming (the Center), alongside substantial holdings of their artwork. Part of Sharp’s carefully curated collection and one of his studio buildings—his “Absarokee Hut” from Crow Agency, now relocated and refurbished—are also at home at the Center. Together, the Center’s four “studio collections” provide invaluable insights into the creative processes of the artists who built them and are counted among the museum’s most unique assets. They include an extraordinary array of artwork, collected artifacts, studio furnishings, personal effects, and archival material.

This latest volume of the Whitney West series and a complementary online database of Sharp’s work in institutional collections constitute a project that was inspired in part by the Center’s holdings of Sharp’s artwork, possessions, papers, and Montana cabin. Much of this trove was donated to the Center by Sharp scholar Forrest Fenn of Santa Fe, author of the sweeping biography Teepee Smoke: A New Look into the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp (2007). As part of the Center’s ongoing efforts to promote scholarship focused on art of the American West, this project builds on Fenn’s expertise and research by providing fresh perspectives on Sharp’s life and career. Special attention is paid to Sharp’s artistic process, which involved diverse workspaces and influences. Peter H. Hassrick, the Center’s Director Emeritus and Senior Scholar, spearheaded this important and timely undertaking and invited three fellow art historians to lend their expertise.

Marie Watkins traces Sharp’s education, begun in Cincinnati and continued in Europe. Readers will learn that Sharp became a well-regarded teacher early in his career but was also a committed and lifelong student of his craft. Sponge-like and eager, Sharp soaked up lessons about beauty and art in museums and academy halls, through personal interactions with teachers and fellow artists, and by studying aesthetic principles of varied cultures and eras. Sharp possessed an open mind and an empathetic appreciation for the world and all its difference and was inspired by art as diverse as European Old Master paintings, Chinese ceramics, and Indian artwork and artifacts.

Peter Hassrick’s contribution to this catalogue clarifies elements of Sharp’s training, patronage, and early inspiration, and untangles apocryphal accounts of his start as an “Indian painter.” Hassrick also contextualizes Sharp’s “multifarious studios,” describing the practical and philosophical importance of ateliers for artists working at the turn of the century, and illustrating how Sharp conformed to and defied conventional uses of a workspace. Each of Sharp’s studios possessed a unique character, reflecting a different facet of the artist’s persona; he worked in makeshift sites in the West just as nimbly as he did in commodious luxury in the Midwest and Europe. He painted en plein air, working from a retrofit sheep wagon amid sage-covered prairies or, alternatively, from a comfortable chair in one of his own backyards—a lush garden with soaring hollyhocks in Taos or the often-snowy tract stretching toward the Little Bighorn River at Crow Agency. Sometimes Sharp’s studio was a buffalo hide teepee set up on his property. Studio walls could hardly contain him, yet each workspace Sharp occupied during his career in its own way aided his work and provided an enriching atmosphere in which to create.

Sarah Boehme closely examines one of Sharp’s homes, the rustic log cabin he built in Montana in 1905. The Absarokee Hut has stood on the Center’s campus in Cody since 1986, when Forrest Fenn donated the historic building to the museum. Thanks to Fenn’s generosity and foresight, summertime visitors can tour the restored cabin filled with Sharp’s belongings, crossing its threshold into the artist’s world. In her essay, Boehme describes the cabin’s decor and the artist’s collections, which he thoughtfully gathered and artfully displayed. She traces the cabin’s history—its construction, improvement, and eventual sale. Sharp’s Absarokee Hut was simply built and comfortably appointed; its design and furnishings were chosen with care by the artist. His interests and influences were on display in the eclectic assemblage decorating the studio’s walls and surfaces. But more than a workspace or a Wunderkammer, the Absarokee Hut was a hub, a central location that granted Sharp proximity to the subjects which inspired him.

Kelin Michael offers further insight into Sharp’s biography, suggesting ways in which the artist’s schooling in Europe and in the Midwest influenced his later paintings of western American subjects. Europe’s fine art academies cast a long shadow in the nineteenth century, their considerable influence stretching to Cincinnati, where Sharp began his studies. Michael points out that many midwestern artists whom Sharp admired as a young man were themselves products of European instruction. They returned to America and shared with their students, including Sharp, the skills and styles to which they had been introduced abroad. Sharp was thus exposed to European trends from his earliest days in art school. His own stints of overseas study would provide him a more intimate understanding of contemporary and historical European art and strengthen his technical abilities as a painter. These early experiences were foundational and provided for Sharp a toolkit on which he drew throughout his career.

Sharp’s travelogue would impress even the most avid adventurers today, and when one considers the greater challenges facing long-distance explorers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is hard not to appreciate the artist’s fortitude. Fueled by wanderlust and a desire to leave a lasting legacy, Sharp traveled the world, from Munich to Madrid to Montana, from San Francisco to Santa Fe and farther still. And though the open road seemed to summon him with each change of season, Sharp built studios in the places that held the greatest significance and offered the greatest artistic opportunities. Taos, New Mexico, and Crow Agency became the homes to which the itinerant artist would consistently return.