Joseph Henry Sharp · 1859–1953

Joseph Henry Sharp: a biography

Profoundly deaf from boyhood, Joseph Henry Sharp became one of the first trained American painters to work in Taos, and one of the most dedicated portraitists of the Plains and Pueblo peoples of his time.

An Ohio boyhood

Sharp was born on September 27, 1859, in Bridgeport, Ohio, across the river from Wheeling, to Irish immigrant parents. As a boy he nearly drowned. The ear infection that followed began a hearing loss that eventually left him completely deaf. For the rest of his life he read lips and carried a pad for written conversation. His father died when Joseph was about twelve. The boy went to work, and by fourteen he had left school for Cincinnati. There he lived with an aunt and enrolled at the McMicken School of Design, later continuing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Europe and the first trips west

In 1881 Sharp sailed for Europe and studied in Antwerp. It was the first of three study trips abroad. Back home, in 1883 he made his first journey into the American West, sketching Native American people in the Southwest and the Northwest. Later study took him to Munich with his Cincinnati friend John Hauser, to the Académie Julian in Paris, and to the circle of Frank Duveneck. He married Addie Byram in 1892 and taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, painting society portraits to supplement his salary.

Taos, 1893

In the summer of 1893 Sharp visited Taos, New Mexico. The pueblo, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the willingness of local people to sit for portraits made a lasting impression. In Paris a couple of years later he described Taos to two younger American painters, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips. Their own arrival in Taos in 1898, after a broken wagon wheel stranded them there, is often counted as the founding moment of the Taos art colony. That is why Sharp is so often called the artist who "started it all."

Crow Agency and the Plains portraits

Through the 1890s Sharp also travelled north to Montana and the Little Bighorn country. By about 1899 he and Addie were spending part of each year at Crow Agency, and by 1903 they had set up a seasonal home there. They came in time for the Crow Fair each autumn and moved on to California for the winter. In 1905 Sharp built a log studio-cabin he called the Absarokee Hut. It has since been moved to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.

His portraits of Crow, Cheyenne, Sioux and other Plains sitters were exhibited in Washington, D.C., in 1900, and the Smithsonian Institution bought eleven of them. The work drew the interest of President Theodore Roosevelt. Then Phoebe Apperson Hearst bought some eighty paintings at once and commissioned more. The Hearst collection eventually went to the University of California, Berkeley. Her patronage let Sharp leave teaching and paint full time.

A painter on the move

For years Sharp worked a circuit across the West. He spent summers in Taos and autumns at Crow Agency, then wintered in Pasadena, travelling by wagon or in the comfort of the Great Northern and Santa Fe railway cars. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which holds part of his studio collection and archival material, describes him as an inveterate wanderer. On these trips he collected as much as he painted: Navajo rugs, shields, pottery, baskets and other artifacts. These objects furnished his studios, and many reappear in his paintings. He worked with an academically trained eye, careful with costume, ornament and likeness. That care is one reason his portraits are still studied as historical records today.

A founder of the Taos Society of Artists

In 1909 Sharp bought a small former Penitente chapel in Taos to use as a studio, near the home of the painter E. Irving Couse. In 1912 he settled in Taos permanently. Addie died in April 1913, and about two years later Sharp married her sister, Louise. On July 1, 1915, Sharp, Couse, Blumenschein, Phillips, Oscar Berninghaus and W. Herbert Dunton held the first meeting of the Taos Society of Artists. Its purpose was to exhibit and sell members' work nationally, and it went on until 1927. Sharp was the oldest and most experienced of the six founders.

Later life

In his Taos years Sharp's subjects widened: landscapes of aspen groves, canyons and summer storm clouds; Pueblo figures in firelit interiors; and, increasingly, still lifes and garden pictures of hollyhocks and other flowers, a side of his work that scholars have recently given more attention. For decades the Sharps split the year between Taos and Pasadena. Sharp stayed active into his nineties, closed his Taos studio in 1953, and died in Pasadena on August 29, 1953.

Legacy and collections

Because he painted many sitters from life and often recorded their names, Sharp's work has documentary as well as artistic value. The Smithsonian American Art Museum describes its "ethnographic as well as artistic value." His paintings are in the Smithsonian, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House and the University of California, Berkeley, among others. His Taos studios are preserved as part of the Couse–Sharp Historic Site, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Sources

Written for josephhenrysharp.com. Dates and facts were checked against the sources listed below.

1. Couse Foundation, "Joseph Henry Sharp Biography," Couse–Sharp Historic Site. cousefoundation.org/sharp-bio.
2. Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Joseph Henry Sharp." americanart.si.edu.
3. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, "Joseph Henry Sharp." centerofthewest.org.
4. Taos Art Museum at Fechin House, "Taos Society of Artists." taosartmuseum.org.
5. U.S. Department of State, Art in Embassies, "Joseph Henry Sharp." art.state.gov.
6. Wikipedia, "Joseph Henry Sharp." en.wikipedia.org (accessed October 2026).