oil on canvas
101 x 92 cm (39 3/4 x 36 1/4 in.)
signed lower right; signed and inscribed in the artist's hand on verso: A Prehistoric Bowl — Excavated Near The Pueblo of Zuni, N. Mex. ($500 prize Pasadena Art Inst. 1935). Chest was property of Gov. Bent, 1st Gov. of New Mexico, killed in the battle of Taos in last war of Indians + Gov't Red drapery I bought from the back of a camel (over howda) in Biskra, Africa. -J. H. Sharp. Taos, N. Mex.

Sold together with the pictured chest, as per Sharp's inscription formerly belonging to Governor Charles Bent of New Mexico, chip-carved with hand-wrought iron hasp, dating to the late 18th century, by a Spanish Colonial furniture maker (attributed to the Valdez family of Velarde, New Mexico); overall dimensions: 76 (h) x 155 (w) x 56 cm (29 7/8 x 61 x 22 in.)

PROVENANCE
Purchased directly from Sharp by Laura Scudder, at whose house in La Habra Heights, California, Sharp used to stay during the 1930s and 40s Mrs. Scudder bought the painting with the blanket (now lost), and was later given the chest by Sharp
Thence by descent to Mark Scudder (1943-2017), Grandson of Laura Scudder

EXHIBITED
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, California, 1935

LITERATURE
Letter written from the artist to Laura Scudder dated May 29th, 1944, regarding the transportation of the chest from Santa Fe to California (see image). Letter is not included in the purchase of this lot

LOT NOTES
We are grateful to James D. Balestrieri, for writing the following catalogue note:

The key in the painting is the key to the painting and to the mystery, unsolved and unresolved, at its heart. Sharp is clear about the objects in his masterful still life, A Prehistoric Bowl. Three detailed notes in his own hand on the back of the work attest to this: “—A Prehistoric Bowl— excavated near the Pueblo of Zuni;” “Chest was property of Gov’r Bent, 1st Gov. of New Mex. Killed in the battle of Taos in last war of Indians and Gov’mt;” and “Red drapery I bought from the back of a camel (over howda) in Biskra, Africa.”

Before his wanderlust led him around the globe, Joseph Henry Sharp’s life began in Ohio in 1859. A swimming accident when he was a boy left him deaf, and school would prove a burden. Legend has it that he doodled to communicate, but the outdoors, art, and Native Americans enthralled him. By age 14, he was studying art in Cincinnati. Sharp finished his education in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, and brought his classical training home with the idea of painting Native Americans in the West. He first visited Taos in 1893 but secured his reputation painting hundreds of portraits, landscapes, and scenes of daily life and celebrations while living among the Crow in a cabin and studio near the Little Big Horn in Montana. Sharp made Taos his permanent residence in 1912 and was one of the founders, in 1915, of the Taos Society of Artists. He would return to the Northern Plains before roaming through California—where he would settle later in life—and Hawaii. Sharp traveled again to Europe and journeyed even further, to Africa, Asia, and South America on his restless search for people and places to paint.

Consider Sharp’s three inscriptions.

The Zuni Pueblo, south of Gallup, New Mexico, had been continuously occupied for millennia when Sharp visited there in 1904. The Zuni culture, religion, and traditions had, and have, been maintained on the naturally fortified adobe terraces of the Pueblo in unbroken succession despite European colonization. The centerpiece of the painting is the Zuni bowl, buried, and, as Sharp writes, “excavated.” While it might have been absent from human eyes, it never ceased to exist. The bowl sits atop Bent’s chest, an artifact of Spanish colonialism and imperialism, once owned, according to Sharp, by the first Governor of the New Mexico Territory after Spain ceded it to the United States. Such chests are highly prized adaptations of Old World Spanish craftsmanship to the woods available in the Southwest. The ornate Spanish baroque embellishments one would expect are here transformed into strong geometries influenced by indigenous design. The shapes on the front of Bent’s chest, for example, might well be found on native blankets or pots, or incised in the silver jewelry of the region.

Governor Bent—whose brother-in-law was Kit Carson—was, as Sharp reminds us, killed in the last revolt of the Taos Pueblos against American rule in 1847. The bowl, like the people who fashioned it, not only survives but retains its beauty, its elegance, and its functionality. Even empty, it still holds its history. Perhaps the bowl has escaped the chest. Perhaps the indigenous inflections in the design on the chest have thrust and pushed their way out of the wood, irrepressibly and inexorably.

What of the Algerian cloth that covered the howdah on the camel Sharp rode that serves as backdrop to Prehistoric Bowl? Sharp visited North Africa in 1923 and spent time in Biskra, where the Cincinnati papers wrote that he survived a serious sandstorm. What Taos was to the American Southwest, Biskra was to North Africa: a gathering place for European and American artists, writers, and composers to explore their fantasies of otherness. Biskra provided inspiration for Rudolph Valentino’s smash silent film, The Sheik, as well as the setting for Andre Gide’s novel, The Immoralist, and paintings by Matisse. Bela Bartok collected folk music there, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald visited the city. Just as Taos had Mabel Dodge Luhan as the champion of its artistic life, so Biskra had its wealthy European patrons, residents who housed intellectuals and hosted salons. Indeed, those who knew both Taos and Biskra noted congruencies between the two in the terraced desert dwellings, and in the design, pattern and colors of indigenous dress and objects. For traveling artists like Sharp, Biskra was a point of entry into the Sahara and its culture.

It’s tempting to see the light, feathered spaces at upper right in Prehistoric Bowl as an unfinished part of the Biskra cloth, but the subtle shades and folds that Sharp works into the area tell a more complex tale, as does yet another inscription on the back in the artist’s hand, one that reads, “500.00 prize Pasadena Art Inst. 1935.” Just as the artist wanted us to know about the objects depicted in the painting, he also wanted us to know that the painting was a finished work, a work he not only entered in an art festival, but one which brought home an award.

Sharp would have been 76 years old in 1935. I think of the last works of Michelangelo and Turner, the Slaves and the Seascapes, long thought to be unfinished. We know now that they are complete, visions of artists who knew what to include and what to leave out, artists who came to understand the power of simplicity and the power of the absent, the not-yet-realized, the potential.

Sharp was keenly interested in the Dutch still life tradition, in which a simple arrangement of objects resonates with emblematic, allegorical meaning. But unlike his Dutch antecedents, who placed objects of value that signified wealth and luxury, the objects in Prehistoric Bowl exude utilitarian simplicity, beauty, and longevity. The chip in the bowl, the knots in the wood of the chest, and the frayed edge of the cloth at lower right form an oblique triangle. They are like lines in a beautiful face, the topography of lived life.

This may offer a clue to the top of the drapery, painted with light, subtle color. Is this Sharp’s personal answer to the chip, the knots, the frayed edge? Or could this speak to a life that was anything but still and an art ever seeking, repudiating closure, unsolvable and unresolvable, and fiercely defiant in the face of time? In the middle of this triangle, the key to the chest points like a finger, away from the lock, towards the bowl and cloth, balancing the composition and fulfilling the work.

Prehistoric Bowl writes part of the artist’s personal journey as a palimpsest on top of some of the cultures, ancient and more modern, that he experienced and that exerted their influence on his life and art. Sharp’s time floats on top of deep time. The still life becomes a self-portrait. The key is to remember that life and art are always unfinished, that there is always more, that the most we can do is add our layer of history to the myriad layers that are already there. The chest is always open, even when it seems locked. That’s the key.

CONDITION
N.B. The canvas is nailed at the perimeter to a backing board. Observed in frame, the work is in overall very good condition. Overall surface dust and dirt; would benefit from a light cleaning. Very light scuffing in places, such as the upper right corner. Inspection under UV light shows miniscule scattered retouching to the upper center (red striations in the drapery). Otherwise, no significant issues to report. The chest with some age-appropriate wear, no structural issues.

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