Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953)

Dividing his time between Montana and New Mexico, Joseph Henry Sharp primarily used rented studios until 1909 when he acquired a building in Taos across from the old home of legendary frontiersman, Kit Carson. "In keeping with the turbulent traditions of Taos and the subsequent placidity that civilization brought to the old adobe town, the front part of the now quiet Sharp residence had been a dance hall and his first studio had been a chapel of the Penitentes...About 1915 Sharp built a large studio with a good north light at the rear of his property and made additions to the house proper. The old chapel became a storeroom, but over the door still hangs the bell which had been cast for the church at Taos Pueblo around the middle of nineteenth century..." (L.M. Bickerstaff, Pioneer Artists of Taos, Denver, Colorado, 1983, p. 71)