With Indian Hunters Sharp idealized a routine hunt in a snowy pine forest. The four hunters pause in this serene space, as if contemplating their strategy. This painterly construction of Indians living in harmony with nature assures us that the frontier is still there, figuratively and literally frozen in time.
As if to complicate the interpretation of this composition as simply an image of the mythical West, Sharp wrote on the back of the canvas: "Indian Hunters Landscape near Grand Canõn Hotel, J.H.S." Sharp wanted the patron, if not posterity, to know that this setting, at least, was not born of his imagination, but painted firsthand at one of the most celebrated natural wonders in the American West. A pine forest, however, was not the customary landscape associated with that awe-inspiring iconic chasm. The descriptive notation, typical of Sharp, was necessary in this case if a collector desired the precise location. One often did. Numerous letters attest to his patrons’ voracious inquisitiveness about the legendary lands and peoples of the West. They wanted details of place and date. They sought narrative, and historical, ethnographic, and anecdotal information about the sitters and their material culture.
Indian Hunters, although steeped in Beaux-Arts aesthetics, is touched by modernism. The triangular composition is firmly rooted in the academic neoclassical tradition. Balanced and anchored in the center by placing the seated man to the left, the composition has a slightly off-center shift. On the right, the snow-dusted bush makes the composition symmetrical but doesn’t carry the same weight in interest as the figure on the left. The blue-blanketed individual forms the apex, not only in this triangle but also in the repeated smaller triangular grouping of the three standing men. The semi-circle of the gently sloping snow-covered hill beyond, which is almost a triangle itself, frames the figures, while the vertical pine trees anchor the hunting group firmly to the landscape.
Marie Watkins
