Glacier Park, Blackfeet Reservation, Montana

or
Spring Evening in the Blackfoot Country

Generously provided by Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art

For a man from the flatlands of Ohio, the Lewis Range of the Rocky Mountains must have been an astonishing sight to behold. When the artist first confronted the granite spires that rose out of the northern plains, the area had been, in large part thanks to Sharp’s friend George Bird Grinnell, designated as a forest preserve and was accessible via the Great Northern Railway. Although it had been occupied by several other tribes over the centuries the region was home to the Blackfeet at that time. The Blackfeet considered the Lewis Range, which was the western limit of their reservation, the backbone of the world, and Grinnell referred to it as the “Crest of the Continent.” The combination of this stunning scenery and the congregation of some of the most renowned of the Northern Plains tribes provided Sharp with a remarkable subject for his brush. It is no wonder that after his first full summer among the Blackfeet in 1902, he returned to paint there steadily for the next four years and sporadically thereafter.

In this work, Sharp provides a pictorial emblem of tranquility and harmony. The array of spring flowers, mostly lupines, in the foreground, an intimate gathering of Blackfeet lodges in the middle distance, and the commanding forest and mountains behind beckon the viewer’s attention into a wonderland of glorious serenity. In a note on the reverse of the painting, Sharp wrote that the location of the scene was near where the first hotel in the park was located, Glacier Park Lodge, built in 1913. He also said, "Never painted a better mountain picture."

This may be a companion work to Summer Camp in the Woods, Blackfoot Country (related image 526) that was painted in 1907, the year he stopped by Great Falls to meet the much-celebrated Charles Russell. It would have been convenient for Sharp to have headed north from there into what would become Glacier National Park just three years later, near the area where the Russells had built their famous Bull Head Lodge in 1905.

Peter H. Hassrick

Artist

Joseph Henry Sharp

Date

ca. 1907

Catalogue Number

560

Medium

oil on fabric support

Inscriptions

LR: J.H.SHARP. "Glacier Park, Blackfeet Reservation, Montana. / Big hotel not far from tepees on left. / Picture painted before hotel was built. J.H. Sharp. / Never showed it much / or tried to sell it. / Never painted a better mountain picture. / JHS. Aug. 1950"

Penciled on old backing board: "550" "not for sale" and "650" (crossed out)

Inked on old backing board "Plate #5" "Glacier Park - Blackfeet Res -" and "450" have been partially erased on old backing board

Dimensions: 24 1/2 x 30 in.
Credit Line: Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN
Accession Number: 1989.3.86
Subjects: Blackfeet, Montana, landscape, reservation, spring

The artist; [?]; Harrison Eiteljorg; present owner by gift

Exhibition catalogues for Sharp are not available for the years 1902 through 1904. This work may be later than that, however, matching a title in a show at the Closson Galleries in Cincinnati, Pictures of the West, that included two Glacier area landscapes with teepees, Summer Camp in the Woods, Blackfoot Country (Record 526) and what may be this work, Spring Evening in Blackfoot Country.

A smaller, associated sketch taken later in the day and from a slightly different vantage point can be seen in related image 725.

Glacier Park, Blackfeet Reservation, Montana

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