Running Horse

Joseph Henry Sharp, Running Horse, 1897, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1985.66.209,417
Copied Joseph Henry Sharp, Running Horse, 1897, oil on paperboard, 13 349 58 in. (34.924.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1985.66.209,417

Artwork Details

Title
Running Horse
Date
1897
Dimensions
13 349 58 in. (34.924.5 cm)
Credit Line
Museum purchase
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on paperboard
Classifications
Keywords
  • Indian — Pueblo
  • Portrait male — Running Horse — bust
Object Number
1985.66.209,417

Artwork Description

Joseph Henry Sharp painted Running Horse in Taos, New Mexico, where he made idealized portraits of Native Americans for his Cincinnati patrons. In a letter to John Ewers in August 1948, Sharp noted that he painted this portrait “years ago before they began to paint and dress up with feathers and stuff for tourists. This fellow is [now] a big fat 200-pounder & has a curio store!” Sharp’s comment indicates that many of his models, though pictured in “authentic” costume and seemingly untouched by the modern world, had become assimilated into a culture that regarded them as marketable curiosities. (Watkins, “Painting the American Indian at the Turn of the Century: Joseph Henry Sharp and His Patrons, William H. Holmes, Phoebe A. Hearst, and Joseph G. Butler, Jr.,” PhD diss., 2000)