Joseph Henry Sharp - White Swan (ca.1900)

Joseph Henry Sharp is widely considered to have been the “Spiritual Father” of the Taos Society of Artists. He was the first painter to visit New Mexico, before Phillips and Blumenschein made their historic wagon trip. His work is often referred to as poetic, and is steeped in deep nostalgia that he felt all his life for the vanishing culture of the American Indian and the old west. Sharp was born in Bridgeport, Ohio on September 27, 1859 to Irish parents. His father was a local merchant.