2023 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 268263 / 306 • View Catalog •
Prev Lot
•
Next Lot 
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Wyoming
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, Nevada, 2006
Private collection, Colorado
Sharp biographer Forrest Fenn wrote, “Sharp’s life changed dramatically in the years from 1902 to 1910. During a large part of each summer he was busy among the pueblos near Taos, except for occasional trips east to Cincinnati, New York, Chicago, and other cities to show his work. Now financially independent, he established a permanent fall and winter home at Crow Agency. The late winter and early spring of each year were spent vacationing in Pasadena, California, where his sister Nettie had moved and where members of Addie’s family resided. As the years passed, he would be drawn closer and closer to Pasadena. He eventually bought Nettie’s house there, after his health had declined and his best work had been completed.
“More than one person wondered why Sharp spent his winters in Montana and his summer in Taos when it would seem logical to do the reverse. After all, the southern summers were hot and the Montana winters were bitterly cold. Sharp’s standard reply to the question had little to do with the outside temperature: ‘At this season of the year [winter], the Indians [at Crow Agency] have more time for posing – which they are readily induced to do for a consideration of two dollars a sitting – and the snowy landscape, sage brush foothills, and winter foliage along the Little Big Horn River are more paintable.’”
LITERATURE
Forrest Fenn, The Beat of the Drum and the Whoop of the Dance: A Study of the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Fenn Publishing Co., 1983, p. 350, listed
Larry Len Peterson, The American West Reimagined: Gems from the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, 2021, p. 332, illustrated