Joseph Henry Sharp (1859 - 1953). Joseph Henry Sharp was an American painter and a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, of which he is considered the Spiritual Father. Sharp was one of the earliest European-American artists to visit Taos, New Mexico, which he saw in 1893 with artist John Hauser. He painted American Indian portraits and cultural life, as well as Western landscapes. President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned him to paint the portraits of 200 Native American warriors who survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn. While working on this project, Sharp lived on land of the Crow Agency, Montana, where he built Absarokee Hut in 1905. Boosted by his sale of 80 paintings to Phoebe Hearst, Sharp quit teaching and began to paint full-time. In 1909, he bought a former chapel in Taos to use as a studio, near the house of the artist E. Irving Couse. In 1912 he and his wife moved to the area full-time. He built a house with studio near the chapel. Both artists' homes and studios are part of the Eanger Irving Couse House and Studio, Joseph Henry Sharp Studios, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sharp was born in Bridgeport, Ohio on September 27, 1859 to Irish immigrant parents. His father was a merchant by trade. From childhood, Sharp was fascinated with anything to do with American Indians. As a boy, Sharp nearly drowned in a swimming accident. He was pulled from the water and carried to his home by friends who thought he was dead. His mother resuscitated him, but the incident permanently damaged his hearing, and he gradually became totally deaf. As a result, he had to learn to read lips and carried a writing pad with him. Sharp's father died when he was twelve years old. Soon after, the boy began working in a nail factory to help support his family. By age 14, his hearing loss made continued schooling impossible. He quit school and moved to Cincinnati, where he lived with an aunt and worked to support himself and send money to his mother. He studied briefly at the McMicken School of Design, then enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In 1881, Sharp traveled to Europe, where he studied for a year at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. He returned to the United States and in 1883 made the first of his journeys to the American West, visiting the states of New Mexico, Arizona, California and Wyoming, where he began sketching members of the Pueblo, Umatilla, Klikitat, Shoshone and Ute Indian tribes. In 1885 he traveled to Europe with John Hauser, another Cincinnati artist, who studied with him at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Sharp also studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, and in the 1890s with Frank Duveneck in Italy. In 1890, Sharp and 12 other Cincinnati artists formed the Cincinnati Art Club. Sharp returned to Cincinnati where he married Addie and taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. During this period, he painted portraits of local society members. In 1893, he made his second trip to the American West in the company of fellow Cincinnati artist John Hauser, who had studied in Europe with him. They visited Taos, New Mexico for the first time, Sharp on a commission from Harper's Weekly to illustrate Indian life at the Taos Pueblo. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the local Indian culture sparked his enthusiasm, which he shared with colleagues Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips at Academie Julian the next year. Sharp continued to teach in Cincinnati until 1902. During this period he also spent time in Montana, where he camped at the battlefield of Little Big Horn.