American Art Collaborative

Joseph Henry Sharp painted almost two hundred portraits of Native Americans. Like many Europeans and Americans of the time, he placed people in racial categories according to their features. A Portland journalist wrote of Sharp’s portraits, “With the same perception, the artist seems to select the types that from the ethnologist’s standpoint, are nearest perfect.” (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). According to the artist, Quinnah was “a very strong type of young warrior [and] horse raider from [the] Crows . . .” (Sharp to Mr. Ewers, August 8, 1948)