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According to Marie Watkins, a Joseph Henry Sharp scholar and associate professor of art history at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, “The summer of 1899 was a watershed for forty-year-old Joseph Henry Sharp. On break from teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Sharp and his wife Addie Byram traveled to Crow Agency, Montana, for the first time. Sharp witnessed a unique historical assembly: the Crow, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, and Sioux had gathered at the reservation for a momentous council meeting to deliberate land cessions of 1,150,000 acres of Crow land. This occasion made a lasting impression on the artist. Sharp wrote that the tribal council ‘gives an artist great opportunities for old time things.’ Temporarily, he abandoned his work in Taos and turned north to the rapidly changing cultures of the Plains Indians.

“Council scenes became a recurring theme for Sharp throughout his long-lived career. Twenty years later, firmly ensconced in Taos with intermittent visits to Crow Agency, Sharp told a journalist of his compelling need to paint his early Plains experiences for posterity. Sharp maintained a perspective on the past, while fixing an eye toward the future. In The Council Fire, Sharp dressed Taos models in his three favored Plains ensembles from his personal collection of artifacts: the Southern Cheyenne-fringed buckskin leggings and breechcloth; a blue-dyed buckskin shirt with porcupine quillwork, horsehair, and scalp locks that Sharp said he acquired in ‘South Dakota soon after the last battle of Wounded Knee;’ and a natural-colored buckskin shirt hung with fringe and multicolored-quilled strips over the shoulders and along the sleeves, a Blackfoot shirt from Montana.

“Soft glowing colors in the warm interior of the fire-lit tipi form a backdrop for the deep nostalgia Sharp felt for the Plains Indians. In counterpoint, deepening shadows seep through the forms’ contour lines spreading mystery. Sharp’s ubiquitous props of a Rio Grande blanket, Lakota-quilled stem pipe and moccasins, hide drum, buffalo skull, and buffalo robe (that he bought from Crow scout, Curley [Ashishishe], who served under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn), are meant to lend authenticity to the romantic genre painting. As well, they evoke emotional associations from the viewer. The artist asks the viewer to identify with the nostalgia of what he remembers. Sharp revisited the council event, painting it as he saw in his recollections, real, as it happened, intending it for the collective memory of future generations.”

PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Hewlett Bay Park, New York
Property from a Private Collection

Condition ReportPainting has been lined. Surface condition is excellent, with one inch diameter spot of inpainting five inches above buffalo skull. Specks of inpainting throughout.

Important Notice: Statements of condition are provided as a service to potential bidders; such statements are educated opinions and should not be regarded as facts. The Coeur d’Alene Art Auction has no responsibility for any errors or omissions.