San Antonio Hosts Lure of the West

Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens at the San Antonio Museum of Art and continues through August 13, 2000.

Several paintings by Joseph H. Sharp reflect cultural changes that took place in the West from the 1820s through the1940s.

In 1920, Sharp declared, "In the past years I have seen so many things… that probably no other living artist ever saw, such as the Tobacco Dance, Graves, Burials, etc., that if I don't ever paint them, no one ever will."

In Sunset Dance, he uses extraordinary light and vibrant colors to convey a sense of timeless ritual. Brightly clothed villagers in serapes, hats, hair ornaments, and tunics gaze into the pink light. The crowd extends all the way back to the center of town, where the simple adobe dwellings form a pyramid beneath lush hills.

Source: Amy Pastan. The Lure of the West: Treasures of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).

Pictured: Joseph Henry Sharp, 1859–1953, Sunset Dance—Ceremony to the Evening Sun, 1924, oil, 25 1/8 x 30 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Arvin Gottlieb.