Lot number 32 - Auction 154
'THE MEDICINE SMOKE' (1913)

JOSEPH HENRY SHARP 1859 Bridgeport, Ohio, USA - 1953 Pasadena, California, USA 'THE MEDICINE SMOKE' (1913) Oil on canvas. F 70 x 82,5 cm, canvas 56 x 68 cm. Signed and dated lower right 'JHSHARP 1913'. Verso: frame back with label 'Suder's Art Store, 1309 Vine St.' (Cincinnati, Ohio). Minimal retouching, part. minimally smudged. Frame. Joseph Henry Sharp (born 27 September 1859 in Bridgeport, Ohio; died 29 August 1953 in Pasadena, California) is considered one of the most important chroniclers of the American West and the spiritual father of the Taos Society of Artists. His detailed portraits of North American Native Americans and landscapes of the Southwest combine ethnographic accuracy with poetic mood and a keen sense of light and colour. Sharp lost his hearing as a child, which had a lasting impact on his perception and artistic sensibility. After studying at the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati, he travelled to Antwerp, Munich and Paris, where he learned European plein air painting and the technique of direct painting.After returning to the United States, Sharp devoted himself primarily to depicting the lives of Native Americans. In 1900, the Smithsonian Institution acquired eleven of his portraits, whereupon President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned him to paint portraits of survivors of the Battle of Little Bighorn. With the support of patron Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who acquired over 150 of his works, Sharp was able to devote himself entirely to painting.In 1909, he purchased a former chapel in Taos, New Mexico, as a studio and settled there permanently in 1912. Three years later, he founded the Taos Society of Artists together with Couse, Phillips and Blumenschein, whose reputation he significantly shaped. Sharp's work is characterised by a combination of realistic observation, warm colours and psychological depth. The painting shown here, 'The Medicine Smoke', created in 1913, reflects the mature phase of his work in Taos. It combines a precise character study with subtle lighting and conveys the quiet dignity with which Sharp always portrayed his models. The painting was in a corporate collection in Cincinnati from the 1920s to the 1930s and then passed into private ownership. Through inheritance, the painting ended up in a private collection in North Rhine-Westphalia. Provenance: 1920s/1930s Corporate collection, Cincinnati, Ohio; thereafter private collection, Cincinnati, Ohio; most recently, by inheritance, private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia.