The Flowers of Joseph Henry Sharp

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Still Life with Chrysanthemums Joseph Henry Sharp

We were recently the lucky recipients of a beautiful leather-bound copy of a book titled In Poetic Silence - The Floral Paintings of Joseph Henry Sharp by Thomas Minckler. Sharp (1859 - 1953) is remembered primarily as a painter of the western landscape and portraits of Native Americans. As a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists—and considered to be its “Spiritual Father”—Sharp spent much of his life in New Mexico, Montana and California. (See more about the Taos Society of Artists in our article.) A 2013 Antiques Roadshow television segment appraised one of Sharp’s New Mexico oils (to its astonished owners) at $400,000!

Sharp painted portraits of Sioux, Crow, Cheyenne and Blackfeet tribal members. President Roosevelt took an interest in his work and commissioned him to paint portraits of the two hundred surviving Native American warriors from the battle of the Little Bighorn.

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