In 1890, Sharp and 12 other Cincinnati artists formed the
Cincinnati Art Club. Sharp returned to Cincinnati where he married Addie and taught at the
Art Academy of Cincinnati. During this period, he painted portraits of local society members. In 1893, he made his second trip to the American West in the company of fellow Cincinnati artist
John Hauser, who had studied in Europe with him. They visited
Taos, New Mexico for the first time, Sharp on a commission from ''
Harper's Weekly'' to illustrate Indian life at the
Taos Pueblo. The
Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the
local Indian culture sparked his enthusiasm, which he shared with colleagues
Ernest Blumenschein and
Bert Phillips at
Académie Julian the next year. Sharp continued to teach in Cincinnati until 1902. During this period he also spent time in
Montana, where he camped at the battlefield of
Little Big Horn. There he painted scenes of native life and portraits of members of the
Plains tribes, including the
Crow,
Sioux, and
Nez Perce. In 1900, these portraits were exhibited in
Washington, D.C. The
Smithsonian Institution bought eleven of the portraits. Sharp came to the attention of President
Theodore Roosevelt, who took an interest in him and commissioned him to paint portraits of 200 Native American warriors who had survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn. To be able to stay in the area, Sharp apparently made a private arrangement with Samuel Reynolds, the US Indian Commission agent of the
Crow Agency, Montana, and gained permission to build a log cabin on government land. It was near the confluence of two rivers. Essentially the Crow Agency owned the cabin, which Sharp and his wife Addie built in 1905 with the help of local prison labor, arranged for and mostly supervised by Reynolds. Sharp called the cabin Absarokee Hut. He designed it as a one-room cabin, with a
lean-to containing a bedroom and kitchen. The ridgepole of the cabin was high enough (16.5 ft.) to allow a balcony at one end, where he hung animal hides and Indian blankets for privacy, to make the space behind it usable as a guest bedroom. The Sharps furnished the cabin in an
Arts and Crafts style and decorated it with their collection of Indian artifacts, which included
Navajo rugs, a
buffalo robe, shields, pottery, and baskets. The cabin was featured in
The Craftsman magazine. In an unusual arrangement, Sharp lived and worked there rent-free, and finally was permitted to buy the cabin in 1922.
Phoebe Hearst (mother of
William Randolph Hearst) bought 80 of Sharp's paintings of Native Americans. This enabled him to quit teaching, move into Absarokee Hut with Addie, and devote himself to painting. Hearst commissioned an additional 75 portraits to include members of every major
Great Plains tribe. (Hearst's entire collection of 155 of Sharp's paintings was eventually donated to the
University of California, Berkeley.) Sharp continued to spend some summers in
New Mexico, and in 1909 he purchased a former
Penitente chapel in Taos for use as a studio. It was near the home of the artist
E. Irving Couse. The Sharps finally made a permanent move to Taos in 1912, where Addie died in 1913. Responding to the new landscape and light of New Mexico, Sharp began to change some of his techniques. Although he had trained as an academic painter and usually worked in his studio, he adopted
plein air painting for the first time. In 1915, along with Couse, Sharp became one of the six founding members of the
Taos Society of Artists, of which he was the most senior and experienced. They worked as a sales cooperative to develop Taos internationally as a recognized artistic community. They continued the Society until 1927. ==Winters in Hawaii==