Moonlight and Firelight

or
Council Call of Crows—Moonlight and Firelight

Generously provided by Woolaroc Museum & Wildlife Preserve

This appears to be a smaller, slightly earlier variation on a theme that Sharp called Council Call of Crows. The Woolaroc Museum that owns this canvas signifies that Sharp, in fact, used this as an alternate title. Under the name of Moonlight and Firelight, Sharp exhibited a painting at the Traxel Art Galleries in Cincinnati in 1926, which may be this canvas. It would tie three associated works together, this oil with Council Call of Crows: Firelight and Twilight and Council Call of Crows, Montana (related images 65 and 283).

In all three of his known versions of this theme, Sharp played with the interior lighting of the central teepee as it cast shadows of the figures who make up the gathered council inside. Here that effect is especially pronounced since the exterior scene is set as a nocturn rather than a twilight setting.

Peter H. Hassrick

Artist: Joseph Henry Sharp
Date: ca. 1926
Catalogue Number: 517
Medium: oil on canvas
Inscriptions: LR: J.H.SHARP

Dimensions: 20 x 16 in.
Credit Line: Woolaroc Museum & Wildlife Preserve, Bartlesville, OK
Accession Number: GRA-133
Subjects: firelight, moonlight, teepee

The artist; Frank Phillips, Bartlesville, OK, 1939; present owner

In Sharp's notes on this painting supplied to Frank Phillips in the early 1940s, he wrote nothing about the council call but rather focused on the warmth and healthy atmosphere of teepees in the winter. "In winter the interiors are lined with skins and blankets, 4 to 6 ft. from the ground, the teepee poles acting as the studding on our frame houses, and a small fire in center keeps them very comfortable and healthy. Until the Government began building log cabins and other houses, I never knew a case of consumption." (Woolaroc archives)

Moonlight and Firelight

Related