Crucita—A Taos Indian Girl

or
[Crucita—Taos Indian Girl in Old Hopi Wedding Dress and Dry Flowers]; [Crucita and the Dry Flowers]

Generously provided by Gilcrease Museum

California in 1915 was the center of American art. The state was hosting not one but two major international fairs, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. Both boasted major American, as well as international, art displays. For an artist, these were the places to be seen, and Sharp wanted to be certain that he was represented in both displays with his very best work.

Sharp sent six paintings to San Diego and one to San Francisco. Crucita—A Taos Indian Girl was the sole work he chose for the northern venue, and it must have been one of which he was especially proud. In fact, it turned out to be one of his life-time masterpieces. As paintings of Crucita go, this was an especially complex and captivating composition. Here, she sits in her frequently worn Hopi ceremonial dress with her back to the viewer, posed before a Navaho pot fully arrayed with zinnias and dried flowers. The pose, in reverse, and the lighting, mirror those of another important oil, The Broken Bow (related image 227) of 1912 that he sent to represent him in San Diego that year.

Sharp’s composition in Crucita—A Taos Indian Girl was a purely Anglo construct in that arranging flowers was not a typical Pueblo woman’s pastime. Some art historians have inferred a disingenuous hint to such a presentation (Eldredge, 1986, 65), but it can also be thought of as an especially successful expression of cultural union celebrating the best of both worlds. The oil seems to have stayed in the artist’s possession well into the mid-1940s. It has been opined that this was the most important Sharp work Thomas Gilcrease purchased from the artist. (Porter, 1999, 181)

Peter H. Hassrick

Artist: Joseph Henry Sharp
Date: ca. 1913; [1926-1928]
Catalogue Number: 56
Medium: oil on canvas
Inscriptions: LR: JHSHARP/ TAOS.

Inscribed on dust cover: "Crucita-Taos Indian Girl- / Old Hopi (underlined) Wedding Dress and Dry Flowers / (W70 inter Bouquet. / 1926-8 (enclosed in oval)"

Dimensions: 47 1/2 x 55 1/2 in.
Credit Line: Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK. Gift of the Thomas Gilcrease Foundation, 1955.
Accession Number: 0137.2194
Subjects: Hopi, Taos, floral, girl, portrait

The artist; Thomas Gilcrease, Tulsa, OK; The Thomas Gilcrease Foundation, Tulsa, OK, 1955; present owner by gift

This painting first appears under the title Crucita—A Taos Indian Girl when it was submitted as one of two Sharp entries in the winter, 1913 exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York. It next appeared in the art exhibition of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. It was thought to be one of two oils of this title exhibited in November, 1915 at the Gibson House in Cincinnati and was shown with the TSA painters in 1917 for the opening exhibition of the new art museum of the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, in Chicago at Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. in 1918 and Albuquerque in 1919. In subsequent years it has been incorrectly dated in the mid-1920s.

Thomas Gilcrease purchased this important work in the mid-1940s. Before that, Sharp was still exhibiting it widely with no takers. One of the latest presentations was at the Springville High School Art Exhibit in Utah in 1942.