American Art Collaborative

Sharp arranged three figures to suggest different steps in a ceremonial fire. On the hide hanging behind the men, faint shapes of hands seem to suggest the helpful presence of spirits. Sharp built a successful career as a painter of tribal scenes, and the Smithsonian was one of the first museums to acquire his works. By the 1920s, painters in the American West understood that railroads and Model Ts had irrevocably transformed the lives of Native Americans. But there is no trace of the modern world in this image, and this painting is a ritual itself, a romantic effort to call forth a vanished civilization.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006