Woman by a Wall

    Sharp became infatuated with adobe walls in the mid-1910s. His earliest known rendition of Indians arrayed in front of a sunlit Taos city wall was in 1916 in a scene that opened before him as he departed his front gate and turned onto Kit Carson Road. (related image 618)

 

    In Woman by a Wall, probably painted at about this time, he selected a different location in town and the results were stunning. The foliage of the magnificent overhanging cottonwood tree filters the light that touches the wall. The sun’s rays penetrate the arbor, dappling the wall with traces of light and shadow. With its quiet genre subject, its vigorous brushwork, and sizzling, broken color patterns shed across the adobe surface, this is a remarkable Impressionist construction.

 

Peter H. Hassrick