Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953)

Joseph Henry Sharp was born in Bridgeport, Ohio in 1859.  His father was a merchant. His mother encouraged young Sharp’s study of art, music and literature. Sharp lost his hearing due to a swimming accident at the age of 12---the same year his family had fallen on hard times.  Henry dropped out of school and went to work in a nail factory to help his family financially. At the age of 14, he was accepted in the McKicken School of Design at the University of Cincinnati. Sharp lived with relatives in order to attend the University. Beginning in 1881, Sharp continued his studies in Europe at the Antwerp Academy where he stayed for two years.  When he returned from Europe, Sharp opened a studio in Cincinnati in the same building as the artist, Henry Farny. Sharps portrait commissions gave him enough money to travel west to follow his lifelong ambition to study and paint Native Americans.

Sharp visited Taos, New Mexico, in 1893, working for Harpers Weekly. Sharp returned to Europe for further art instruction.  He traveled to Paris and enrolled in the Academie Julian where he studied for two years.  There, he met Bert Phillips and Ernest Blumenschein---the two artists who would later become the founders of the Taos Art Colony.  Sharp returned to America and taught in Cincinnati.  Later, he spent time in Montana, living near the battlefield of Little Big Horn where he painted portraits of the Plains Indians.
 
In 1901, Phoebe Hearst, mother of William Randal Hearst, saw some of Sharp’s Native American portraits in the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.  She purchased all of Sharp’s pictures in the show and more from his studio.  She also agreed to purchase 15 paintings a year, for the next five years.  As a result, Sharp resigned from his teaching post and split his time between Montana in the winter and Taos in the summer---painting landscapes and genre scenes and portraits of Native Americans.

After 1910, Sharp kept a studio in Pasadena, California and lived in Taos.  Sharp became a charter member of the Taos Society of Artists.  He worked and exhibited with the group for many years.

Joseph Henry Sharp’s love of Native Americans is depicted in his paintings. He did not act as just an artist, but was a friend and advocate of the people he painted.  He recorded Native American life in an intimate, honest and heartfelt way.  Joseph Henry Sharp passed away in his sleep in Pasadena, August 29, 1953.