Going to Trade with E.A. Richardson

     In late September 1905 Sharp wrote to an associate of his, the Cincinnati Art Museum's treasurer, Charles Koch. Sharp was asking Koch to assist him in acquiring a variety of artist supplies, particularly paints. He needed them to be sent by express mail. He told Koch that he was about to become very busy, “rushed silly” as he put it, by his work because the Crow Indian Fair was going to begin soon. “Many Sioux, Cheyenne & other visiting Indians here now already.” (letter Sharp to Koch, 9/22/05, Sharp Papers)

 

     When Sharp was asked by his Crow Agency friend and neighbor E. A. Richardson to supply an image for Richardson’s dry goods store calendar for 1906, it may have been the flow of the Crow Fair Indian traffic that the artist wished to portray (related image 228a). The woman in this scene is dressed and outfitted to the nines as if she wanted to impress those in her path with her opulence and stature. Perhaps Richardson had sold her the coffee pot that dangles from her travois. In any event, Indians were his prime customers, and he wished to have an image on his calendar that respected their cultures. Sharp, adapting a silhouette figure akin to Indian painting, must have struck a perfect chord.

 

Peter H. Hassrick