The Gamblers

     According to Sharp's records, The Gamblers, featuring a group of three men seated on the floor in an adobe room, was exhibited at the University Club in Cincinnati in late 1912. Sharp wrote in the exhibition catalogue about the painting, commenting that “The Taos Indians set aside one day each year when gambling is permissible.” (Exhibition of Pictures of the West, 1912, #4) It is a study of primarily natural light and the human form rather than an assessment of the game that the men play. It was painted in Sharp's Taos Bell Chapel studio.

 

     It is thought that this 30 x 36 inch version of The Gamblers was sent, along with five other important Sharp paintings, to the art exhibition of American art at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego in 1915.

 

     Gambling among men was a relatively frequent subject for Sharp. He had explored the theme in 1906 when he portrayed a gathering of Crow Indian men and women (and even an infant) in the firelit interior of a teepee. That painting carried the same title, The Gamblers, and was part of a large group of portraits and genre paintings that he exhibited at the Fishel, Adler & Schwartz Gallery in New York City that winter. (N Y Herald, 12/23/06) That earlier version of the subject also served as an anatomical tour de force. The Herald commented that they considered the primary figure to be “the finest figure painting Mr. Sharp has yet done.”  

 

     Sharp ventured into the subject of Indian gambling in the mid-1920s as well.  His painting Playing the Game addressed the same theme but was freighted with much more symbolism. In that work, the artist contrasted spiritual options available to Native people in New Mexico with the temptations of monetary gain. The latter seemed to win out in that later work. (see Record 307)

 

Peter H. Hassrick