Joseph Henry Sharp

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Joseph Henry Sharp (September 27, 1859, Bridgeport, Ohio—August 1953) was a painter credited with influencing the creation of the Taos, New Mexico Society of Artists. (See: Taos art colony.) In fact, he may have been the first artist to discover Taos, New Mexico when he visited in 1883. He painted American Indian portraits and cultural life, and Western landscapes. As a youth he permanently damaged his hearing in a near-drowning accident, and gradually become totally deaf.

His formal art training included Mckmicken School of Design (Cincinnati) and Antwerp (Belgium) Academy. He traveled and worked in Europe also. Harpers Magazine commissioned his illustrations of Taos Indian life. Some portraits were purchased by the Smithsonian Institution. President Theodore Roosevelt took an interest in him and had a cabin built for him at Little Big Horn to paint Indian life there. After further travel, he settled in Taos, where he located his major studio. He died in August 1953. He was a historian of the West as well as a painter, and helped to preserve the record of a vanishing way of life.