Summer Camp in the Woods—Blackfoot Country

or
[Restlessly at Home]

Generously provided by Blanton Museum of Art

Sharp was focused on family scenes in the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century and this painting was exemplary of his success in that genre. The canvas is dated 1907 and is thought to have carried the title of Summer Camp in the Woods – Blackfoot Country. It was offered for sale at the Closson Galleries in Cincinnati as early as April 1908, traveled to several cities that year, including Indianapolis and Kansas City, and sold at Cincinnati’s Traxel Art Galleries two years later in December 1910. (sales ledgers, Sharp Papers)

This painting may have been part of an exhibition in Helena in the spring of 1909. Being a painting with a Montana theme, it would have attracted much attention. A critic for the Helena Record was elated and relieved to see a fundamentally distinctive quality in Sharp’s work, differences that separated him from other artists of the day. In contrast to almost all other of his contemporaries, Sharp had realized that the western Indian has a home life and is not always arrayed in the full panoply of war, nor does he spend all his waking hours descending precipitous hillsides, bareback at breakneck speed, and he has chosen for many of his most important pictures scenes around the camp. (Helena Record, 3/1/09)

This oil painting pictures a Blackfeet family encamped beneath an arbor of pine and aspen trees in front of the Lewis Range of the Rocky Mountains west of Browning, Montana. It is a bucolic setting, one that harmonizes the indigenous people of the region with a gloriously beautiful landscape. Unlike Sharp’s winter vistas of the period, this scene is ebullient and vibrant.

Peter H. Hassrick

Artist: Joseph Henry Sharp
Date: 1907
Catalogue Number: 526
Medium: oil on canvas
Inscriptions: LR: J.H.SHARP. '07

Dimensions: 21 1/2 x 32 in.
Credit Line: Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
Accession Number: G1975.6.4
Subjects: Blackfoot, camp, summer, teepee

The artist; [?]; C.R. Smith; present owner by gift, 1975

A related image of this period can be seen in Record 560.

Summer Camp in the Woods—Blackfoot Country

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