The Gift Dance Drummers

or
Gift Dance Drummers—Twilight; The Drummers or Dance Drummers

Generously provided by The Rockwell Museum

The Gift Dance Drummers is one of Sharp’s paintings that exhibits characteristics of his Orientalist influence. While studying in Paris at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi in the 1890s, Sharp was exposed to Orientalist paintings, works by artists inspired by “Oriental” subjects, typically during their travels to Western Asia and North Africa. Some of the professors whom Sharp studied with in Paris were known primarily as Orientalist painters, specifically Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, who co-founded the Society of French Orientalist Painters, and Louis-Auguste Girardot.



     In this scene, the subject matter and colors are reminiscent of these Orientalist works of art. Sharp traveling to the West to paint the Native Americans is very much akin to white Europeans traveling to the Middle East and North Africa to paint the people who lived there. In The Gift Dance Drummers specifically, the type of clothing the figures wear recalls similar garments worn by those in the desert regions of North Africa and the Middle East. While Orientalist works were often somewhat stylized, Sharp’s paint-handling is more impressionist in depicting the light and greenery surrounding the figures, and realist in the treatments of the figures themselves, capturing the nuanced shifts in tone in each of the figures’ robes. In this way, Sharp both incorporates and departs from his artistic influences.



     Interestingly, there is another, later painting done by Sharp titled The Gift Dance Drummers, Taos (Record 385). The two works, at first glance, appear almost nothing alike. The color palettes are completely different, and The Gift Dance Drummers depicts a much more intimate setting, focusing just on five figures seated in a circle, while its counterpart shows a large group of Native Americans with the Taos Pueblo in the background. However, the configuration of figures in The Gift Dance Drummers largely mirrors the group of four seated figures in the left foreground of Gift Dance Drummers.

Kelin Michael

Artist: Joseph Henry Sharp
Date: ca. 1915; [1920]
Catalogue Number: 94
Medium: oil on canvas
Inscriptions: LR: JHSHARP

Dimensions: 29 1/2 x 39 1/2 in.
Credit Line: The Rockwell Museum, Corning, NY
Accession Number: 78.61 F
Subjects: ceremony, drum, group, woman

The artist; C. R. Morley, Mentor, OH, 1929; [?]; The Rockwell Foundation, Corning, NY; present owner by purchase

This version of The Gift Dance Drummers was first shown in January 1916 at an exhibition at the Hotel Gibson in Cincinnati. In the catalogue brochure for the show, titled Catalogue of Indian and Western Paintings, it appeared as the first listing, suggesting that Sharp probably considered it the best work in the show. Listed simply as Dance Drummers, this work was offered at The Schroeder Galleries in Pasadena in early 1927.

It is thought that this painting, titled Gift Dance Drummers - Twilight, sold to C. R. Morley of Mentor, OH in 1927 along with another oil in the Rockwell Museum collection, John & Buffalo Skull, # 97. The combined sale amounted to $1,000. (sales ledgers for April 1929, Sharp Papers)

The Gift Dance Drummers

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