Painting Taos; 8; Forrest Fenn Interview 2 of 3

What's the best way? We'll just take stuff over to that table. Well, we need to talk about that. Okay. So you're not with it. He's looking off camera and talking about it. Right. He's looking off camera and talking to you about it. Yeah, right. Right. And he's just going to pull out books and lay him on that table. Camera's rolling. So are you ready? Ready. Oh, we are ready. This is a letter from Joseph Henry Sharp to the director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Notice the letter had the Department of the Interior of the United States Indian Service. It's dated Taos, New Mexico, June 15th, 1906. Dear Mr. Guest, you see we all add our first love and stamping ground. Bird Phillips is here the year round. Cassage just brought a little place, fitted up a studio and is at work. And luckily for many summers, young burning house of St. Louis just left. And Curtis, Siwan and others are coming. So there may be a Taos colony.

Alla Barbazon yet. I think this is the first reference to the Taos Society of Artists dated six years before the society was founded. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to have... Good again. This is an original letter from Joseph Henry Sharp to the director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Notice the wonderful letter had the Department of the Interior of the United States Indian Service. Taos, New Mexico, June 15th, 1906. My dear Mr. Guest, you see we are at our first love and stamping ground. Bird Phillips is here the year round. Cassage just brought a little studio, fitted up and luckily it worked for many summers. Young burning house of St. Louis just left. Curtis and Siwan and others are coming. So there may be a Taos colony. Alla Barbazon yet. As far as I know, this is the first reference to the Taos Society of Artists six years before it was founded. And it goes on to say that we're only here for a short visit on our way to Zuni and other problos in that direction. I'm working a little, but this climate is killing the germ that was fostered in the north.

He lacked Montana and the snow. We're at 8,000 feet altitude. And Maniana is the finest word to have here. That's still true. What else is in there? Well this is full of original stuff. Louise and Sharp. Now here you see this, this is one of the, this is a still out of that movie, 1919. And here's Sharp's painting of Montana, a teepee scene in Taos. Here's the outhouse. That's his, that's his privy. And here's Sharp's studio, burning house, sharp, brown sand and cows. And here's the studio. See the round wind? It's also square on the inside. And that's Bird Phillips and Sharp. And here is Indian names. This is written by Sharp. What are those of? Can you explain that a little more?

Yeah, this is a, this is a, these are the Sharp's favorite models. Geronimo Maribal, Frank Martinez, that's Elkford. Oh, I'm going to excuse me, start over again. This is Geronimo Elkford Jerry Maribal. Here's Balling Deer for Frank Martinez. John Gomez, who was hunting son. And this list of rest, Ben Castellouhan, who he painted endlessly, was, was Castell's favorite model. And that's why they call him Castellouhan. And Ben, son, Ben Luhan's son, flying feather. And Lois Liebert was Sharp's handyman, work for Sharp for 35 years. Lois Liebert, he was supposed to be the best dancer in town. All the girls wanted to dance with Lois Liebert. And his name was Coyote, or Coyote. And so what is this list of, though?

This is a list of Sharp's models. Okay. I'm on for us, ready. All right, for us. Yeah, just try not to move it too much. You see what's going on? Can you, can you work like that? Yeah, if you work like that, dude, I won't get your shadow. Okay. Keep your shadow on that wall there. Okay, ready. Okay, what are we looking at now? Well, Sharp and the other artists in the house always had favorite customers. And some of them were shared by different artists. Phoebe Hearst and Frank Phillips of Phillips Royal Company. This one, this is a letter to Sharp from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The second paragraph says, Mrs. Rockefeller and I are wondering if you have, or could get for us, a few more of the bags, such as what we saw in your house, and one of which you kind of gave Mrs. Rockefeller. We put pillows inside of them for sofa cushions. They do admirably for this purpose, and we need a few more of them. It's great.

What else is there? There's another letter from John D. Rockefeller. Here's a birthday card from Bernie House to Sharp. And here's a wonderful letter from Bernie Bravel, who was a scout for the seventh Calvary during the custom fight. And he says, my dearest sir, I will now write a few lines to let you know that I want some money. You always give me a steer, STER, and I never forget it. You gave me $25 once, and I never forgot it too. I am ruptured on the both side, and the right side is the biggest as a goose egg, and the other side is the biggest as a pigeon egg. So I want some money to buy a trust to wear on. I'm going on 76 years old, and next month of March the 7th. Be sure to do something for me, and answer my letter as soon as possible

from here's faithfully Bernie Bravel. And here's the original letter. It's cool. Well, here's Frank Phillips. Here's the contract between Tom Gilchrist and Sharp. And here's another Bernie House birthday card when Sharp was 9 years old, September the 27th, 1949. Going on 100 years from Winnie and Bernie. Here's the telegram. Uncle Henry passed away Saturday afternoon, August the 29th. Please notify our friends of the funeral Tuesday morning. Ives and where, March and where, as ever. Louise, be sure.

Sharp's wife's name was Louise. But she'd write him a letter, and she would sign her letters, Lou Easy. And here's what I think is the last color photograph of Sharp. It's taken in 1948. How old was he when he passed away? One month short of 94. These are his etchings. Okay, let's see. There was something here I wanted to show you. You might want to look at this. These are pictures of Taos and then. These are burning houses. I mean, Bert Phillips grandkids. And let's get Carson Scout. Oh, can you sit on that for a minute? Okay. Here's Bert Phillips in one of his Indians. And what's he doing in this picture?

Well, in his home, some canvas isn't his paint box. And Bert Phillips is holding a canvas that he's been painting out on location with his Indians sitting on the horse. There was a picture in here I wanted to show you. That's Bert Phillips with an Indian friend. See, he took these pictures and I've seen pictures very true to life from this photograph. Okay. Can you tell us what's going on? So he's using these photos or what's he doing with this? Well, this Taos ending is playing a love flute. I don't know the Indian model's name, but this is a Bert Phillips photograph. And he painted this subject several times. And what would they, so would they go out and take photograph? Can you kind of explain how they would use photographs?

Yes, photographs, yeah. But they always wanted two or three settings from the model from life. You see how this ending child is posing? Here's an interesting shot. Two Taos endings were the young fawn deer. So can you explain to us how, like, that they would take the photos and use them for their paintings? I don't think people really understand that, like, how that process worked. Well, I don't know any artist that didn't use photographs from one for one reason or another. Van Dan Coacrote a really good book on that subject. But I have 2,800 of Sharp's photographs of Indians. And Cass had more than that. Cass, I think, Virginia Cass has 10,000 photographs of Indians taken by her grandfather. Here's Bert Phillips and his wife in later years. There he is, a dapper young guy. There he is, an old man.

And so Phillips was pretty well-liked? Yeah, Phillips didn't have any enemies at all. Nor did Hennings and Sharp could get his dander up. But I never heard of anybody dislacking Bert Phillips. Let me show you another one here. This is a special sharp book that I made for myself. This is Sharp's original metal that he wanted to paint California exposition in San Diego in 1915. It's sharp for paintings, solid gold metal.

Wow. Is that interesting? That's cool. Can you show some of those books that have the paintings in the cover? This is another book that I made for myself. This is a original sharp oil painting. The Beat of the Drum and the Hope of the Dance. This was published in 1984 with Han Marbled End Papers. Here's another one. I think I have eight of these with original sharp paintings on the cover. Different marble end papers.

And what's inside? This is the second book on Joseph Sharp. Do you have some more books out there that have photos on them that we could look at? Now three of these. Here's a sharp death certificate. These are sharp out of sharp photo collection. There's some things in here I think I'd like to read. That's the original sharp watercolor. Can you just sit on that for a second? The book is called The Beat of the Drum and the Hope of the Dance. It's my first book on sharp. I described it to Peggy who has endured. When I wrote my second book on sharp, I described it to Peggy who's still endures. See these are original sharp things in here.

Can you read us? Can you show us some of the more? Like pick out a couple of really interesting things. I'm trying to find something here. Well, this is one of Sharp's most famous paintings. It's called Silling Corn. It's a large painting, 40 by 48 inches. And this is Cricita when she was a little older and Elfridgeri Maribal. This big pot here is the one up here in the center. And I bought that from the sharp estate. And it appears in that painting? This is the one, yeah. See, this is what I used here. There's the Elf Scan. See it in this painting.

Oh, can you go back to that and tell that story? Because I don't think we got that on camera last time. Well, we need to shoot the scan. We'll shoot it after we get done with this. Can you just explain the story? And just a second. And now. Hold it up a little bit. Hold it up a little bit. Do what? Hold the book up a little bit. Closer. Yeah, right there. Thank you. That's great. This painting is called The Old Chiefs Curry. It's a big painting, 30 by 40 inches in the background. It's an Elf Scan that was given a sharp by one of the custard fighters named Flatelke. He was a sous chief, sub chief. And he told Sharp, it's the best Elf Scan you can find in two days right in any direction. There I am holding it. And these are some of the wilder Indians. Here's a picture of two moons who led the entire Cheyenne nation against custard. Here he is posing in a chair for Sharp.

Sharp paid him two bucks an hour because he was a chief. See, there's the scan again. Here's the cabin that Sharp built on the custard battleground in 1902. I bought it in 1980 and gave it to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. They moved it into their museum. In 1926 at the 50th reunion of the custard fight, this cabin was the headquarters for that reunion. And all the old soldiers that were still alive in the Indians who came to the reunion signed the guest register in this cabin. And Sharp lived there? Sharp lived there, yeah. He had a studio too. Can you go back a couple of pages to the picture of his wagon studio?

That's an interesting idea that I think. The Prairie Dog. Can you explain this, yeah? This Prairie Dog, it's a sheep hurt his wagon. Sharp cut the side out to make a skylight. But it was given to him by Charlie Bear who owned most of the sheep in Montana. And Sharp said that he painted outside in Montana in the wintertime until the paint froze on his brushes. And I didn't believe it. But I had some of his brushes and had some of his paints. So I gave it to a friend of mine with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and said, can you tell me at what temperature the paint freezes on this brush? I think they spent about $200,000 up there trying to find out. I think they told me at 31 degrees below zero the paint would freeze on that brush. And so I believed Sharp after that. Would he use something like that out in Towel City? No.

Here's a letter to the bird Phillips from Sharp. Doesn't say anything. But I've Sharp's guess book. I mean, sales book, we probably should shoot that. Do you want to bring that out here? That might be cold. This is interesting. Here's a painting called Chant to the Moon of Plenty. It was the first sharp painting that ever bought. I gave a friend of mine, John Rose, $1,700 cash and 2073 model winch edges for this painting. I consigned it to a friend of mine by name of Wolfgang Pogzeba, who took it to Montana. Coming back in his plane, he crashed, killed himself and his wife and son and another person.

And the painting was thrown, they didn't find the records till the next year. The plane spent the winter out there in the open. And this painting was thrown out of the airplane. And that's what it looked like when the insurance company gave me the painting back. And what made you buy your first sharp painting? What captured your imagination to write two books about it? It was 1967 when I bought my first painting. And that got me started. I moved to Santa Fe and built a gallery. And I was in the right place at the right time with the right product. And I think I was the third gallery in Santa Fe to open. You know, the sole paintings. I couldn't sell anything. The first two shows I had, I didn't sell so much as a book. And I told myself, you know, I had a little bit of money left. I'm going to spend what I have left on advertising and slam the door on my way out.

And I spent money on advertising, things started happening. And one thing led to another, and I specialized in the old house painters, including fish and gas barred. But particularly sharp, I bought the sharpest estate. I bought the gas barred estate, including the house, the contents of the house. I bought a big part of the house estate and the blooming shine estate. And the fish and the estate. And that was what started it all for me. Here's a wonderful birthday card to sharp from OE Burning House. Can you get a picture of this? Hold just a sec. And ready. This is a birthday card from Oscar Burning House. Oh, I guess it's a Christmas card. It says Happy New Year. And here's Burning House self-portrait of Burning House. And these two kids, this is Ralph Phillips.

And not Ralph Phillips, but Burning House's son. Oh, wait, can you just go back to that? And they remained good friends the whole life? Oh, yeah. Yeah. This and Kous and Sharp and Hennings and Phillips were the really good guys up there. I don't know much about Oopher, but I know Oopher's not one that I liked. But another interesting thing. An artist, an artist have always had a problem paddling a painting. It was so redone and the two things I hated was titling a painting and signing it. And so what Sharp would do, that night he'd sit on his couch and just arbitrarily title paintings. One title would remind him of another title. So here we're looking at by the teepees blaze where the trail divides, crossing the

great trail where the trails cross. You see how one title is leading him into another one. The regions of the home wind, the regions of the soft wind, silence of the desert, the wind flying for forest. And so now in the next year we see paintings by Sharp coming out where the trail divides. And so he and I have probably five or six of these different little notes that he made for himself. I think that's very interesting. That's a really, that's great, that kind of process stuff is really, that's interesting. Here's the original contract between Thomas Gilchrist and Joseph Sharp, where October 1945, where Gilchrist bought all the best and biggest paintings of Sharp, he bought about 15 of them for $18,860 each one of them is a million dollars today.

The sunset dance, one of the great paintings, was $650 sharp, so that Gilchrist for 400. And how much is that probably worth a million dollars? And we can go back to this page. And as far as in Sharp's own lifetime was he pretty successful, I mean, was he, I mean, sure. Sharp was very successful and I said this in my book, even during the Great Depression, Sharp was, and I have all of his back accounts and cancel checks. So you know, I know how much money he had, but he was successful, he never did, he never did want for money. But he never stopped being a salesman either, selling was not only for money, but it was for ego. You know, I want you to want my things and give me money for it. That's worth something. And how many paintings was he turning out a year, like was he fast, was he slow? I said in my book here that, sure, and I spent one whole day trying to calculate.

First of all, he was deaf and that was made even more productive. I said that he'd painted 10,500 paintings in his lifetime. That's probably true within 10%. So he was selling, to Frank Phillips of Phillips All Company, Borosville, Oklahoma, 1939, he's selling these great paintings, Bill Jones. Look on the, looks on the ground, was a, was a Crow Indian, Wolfier, was a Sue, Bull Child, was Black Feet, Deaf Bull, was Crow, Marrow Bones, was Black Feet, Big Brave, Black Wolf, Bear in the Clads, Chief Morning Ego, Lil' Mass, Flat Iron, Sue, Spottedale, and all of these paintings, he sold to Frank Phillips at one time and look at the size of these, seven by 40, 30, 36, 24, 30.

Were those pretty large canvases for the day or? Larger than an average sharp painting. These portraits were usually 18 by 12 or 12 by 10. Let's see what's in this other book, I hope you got it me way down. Now this is good, I like this stuff, this is the dust stuff for me. These are letters to me from the Sharp's Relatives telling me things about him. See these are Sharp's original photographs, these are General Kirk, who is a rep, an

rapper, here's Sunoop, and Sharp tells who Sunoop was, a war chief of the Shoshone in close Linneal Descendant of Sakajewia, the noted Lewis and Clark Squall God, he was so kindly encouraged, always first hand blah, blah, blah, treated sharp well, sharp always like that, you're going to want to get some pictures of, you'll chapel up at the Cal studio. See here's Penitenti, Sharp took these pictures of Penitenti, if the Penitenti is a known it data shotting. Can you let him just film that? Yeah, he needs a little bit more time to grab it. I use this photograph right here in the book. So can you explain to us what we're seeing there? The Penitenti's were a take off from the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church didn't condone what they did, but they were really pretty severe Catholics, and they believed in

flagellation, whipping themselves to the point of bleeding in their beliefs, but it was a very secret society, no one was supposed to see it, and people were killed trying to get a look at it. And can you tell us about Sharp's studio, what you were telling him before? The original Sharp's studio, the little, what he called the chapel of the Copper Bell, is really one room. The roof leaked early on when Sharp was working in there, and ruined a lot of his negatives. He was really mad about that, and he had to throw all the negatives out, but then he built a little room off to the side to protect them. But the Penitenti's used a little chapel to whip themselves on their backs, and if you look up in the vigas, you can see a lot of blood drops on the vigas. And this is where Sharp worked?

Really about his new studio. Here's a studio in Cincinnati. Here's Rich's new general store, which was the trading post next to the door. Here's some where Sharp lived in Montana on the Crow reservation. I guess there's nothing good in here. These letters are the guest. What was it about Sharp that made you want to write a book about him? Why that particular artist? What did you personally find? There was a lady that lived across the street for me in Santa Fe from my gallery. Okay.

Let's do this. We're going to do that. Look at her. Turn to her. Okay. There was a lady. Okay, wait a minute, sir. And. Ready. Thank you. Okay. There was a lady by the name of Lorraine Carr that lived across the street from my gallery in Santa Fe. She was a good friend of Sharp's and a lot of the Taoist painters. She had a 15 minute radio program every day and I always advertised with her. I never advertised to sell but to buy. And she told me that she had a scrapbook that had been made by Sharp's wife. And I said, let me look at it. She just know you can't look at it. And I tried to buy it from her and she wouldn't sell it. Well finally, she had a stroke and died and I bought it from the estate. And it had wonderful things in it about Sharp that said things that contradicted the sharp biographies that I had read. So I said, well, I'll just write a book and change the story and make it, make it right. And that's what I did.

And was there anything particular that you that you felt bonded to him about like anything you admire about him a lot? Yeah. Let me. Yeah, let me uh, let me just look strange and look right down this is another one of my books. Let me see what I have here. I said something about that in 1979 I purchased a number of books from the estate of Lorraine Carr who had been a friend and Taoist neighbor of Joseph Henry Sharp, including in the purchase was a scrapbook of photographs, letters and newspaper clippings about the artist's laugh between 1886 and 1923. The scrapbook had been compiled mostly by Eddie Brown, Byron, who had been Mrs. Sharp in 1982. My casual interest turned to excitement as I discovered more and more pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of Sharp's laugh and the lives of those who surrounded him.

And I talked about Andrew Carnegie buying paintings in George Bergernau and Fernando Lundgren and you know the romance of all that, the really old timers and Sharp, those Taoist painters were a very unusual bunch of people in a very unusual place at an impossible time in the world and that really had never happened before and it has not happened since. There have been lots of painters move to Taoist and they call themselves all kinds of things trying to promote themselves like the Taoist society did but none of them have been able to accomplish what these guys did and all of them were so good, it was just something that impossible to happen but it did. But you know when you get really down to them, I didn't know any of them, but I've got

an archive that's full of material about them and what it boils down to is they were just plain old people that had a talent in a very narrow area and they were very good at what they did. You know any worrisome, any worrisome said everybody has their 15 minutes and he must have been thinking about the Taoist society when he said that because that's what happened. And then when they died out, well it was gone, pennies they were selling for $400 then, a lot of them are million dollars now and they would be appalled if they could see what their pennies were selling for now. But you know a nickel would buy, a Wimpy Hamburg and a Coca-Cola so you know everything stays what it's staying the same. How would the New Mexico, the history of New Mexico be different if they hadn't come out here? Well certainly Taoist would be different, Taoist is a good thing about Taoist, the good thing about New Mexico is that nothing ever happens here.

And you know the land of Manana is the way it is and it's where the Santa Fe has a city airport that is not furnished by commercial airliners. And a few years ago the governor was embarrassed because commercial airliners weren't coming into the state capital, the only state in the union that didn't have an airport with commercial airplane. So the governor told the city to enlarge the airport so they could come in here and the city said no we don't want to, he said but we'll sell you the airport for $1 and you can do it and the governor says well I don't want to do it. And the good thing about Santa Fe is that nothing is happening and we don't want it to change. But would if the Taoist painters hadn't come here, would New Mexico have been a destination for artists? I mean how important were they to make that happen? In my opinion that Taoist or Santa Fe would not have become an art center had it not

been for the Taoist painters. It was the only magnet that they had. And you know for the same reason that Mewsue Texas is not an art center because those guys didn't go over there and paint. It would be as big as Taoist today if they had moved to Mewsue or someplace else. But it was the mountains, it was a beautiful chameleon and a fallet bloom, beautiful yellow and the Indians on horseback, the romance, everything, all the lines crossed at Taoist in Mexico. The Spanish people, they love to paint the old Spanish character studies and the Spanish language, canally, got a loopay, the words just want to roll off the end of your tongue and that was so romantic and the anglos, they call them the Americans up there in those days because they stood out and they all had to huddle together for protection. The Taoist Indians got along very well with the painters, the Spanish people, there were

some militants Spanish up there. And you know like I think in any societies you have some pulls and pushes and the artists normally were immune to some of the things that were happening around them. It was a wild town. A crazy town to be up there. But you know it's a tourist town today but there's still a lot of the old vanilla smell up there of Taoist, the dusty roads and the holly hawks that are so wonderful and the beautiful canyon, the real grand canyon that just drops forever into the water. People jump off of that bridge and into the canyon take some five minutes to hit the water. I think that's a pull for some of these people like to kill themselves because I get to watch the scenery on the way down I guess.

You know it's a beautiful place and when you come out on the road to Taoist, when you come out out of the canyon up on top and first see Taoist and a beautiful deep real grand canyon on the left, it's just you know it's a wonderful place but the painters were a major part of that but the characters were two, guys like Go Valley Pras was a real state agent and he bragged about cheating people when he saw them houses and longed on done and Maysmack Horace and Tercee to Ferguson and those people that are really the book I'm writing called Closest Stories of Taoist, I'm going to tell a lot of those great old stories about those guys. They are a manby who everybody hated was murdered and his two dogs ate his head off. That's great, those guys are great. Do you want to bring this photo over and put the whole palm? Yeah, you know like making an entrance and lay it on the table, that'd be great. Actually, set them down and then give me a moment before you start talking, okay?

Okay. This is a photograph of the Taoist baseball team in the early 1920s. Here's Ernest Blumenschein, hole in the back, you can see the serious look on his face and here's the mascot down here, Helen Blumenschein. And where were they playing? They had teams that they played, there was fierce competition. Where were they playing? There were three or four baseball teams in Taoist and Blumenschein always won and they bragged about it, you know, it was the fierce competition. Who were they playing against? Other local teams, I don't know the names of them. Let me take this thing out, I don't know whether you can get this or not. Here's a photograph, that's kind of interesting.

What is written here in camp on the left is a picture of Ernest Blumenschein working on something. Next is Charles Burninghouse, the son of O.E. Burninghouse, here's Bert Phillips, here's Ralph Phillips, Bert Son, this is O.E. Burninghouse and the end end here is Geronimo Gomez and the photograph is dated 1916. And can you tell us about Gomez? He had an Indian name, I forget now what it is, I mean he had an English name, I mean that's a Spanish name, he had an English name and an Indian name, but I don't remember

what they were. And he was a model? Yeah, he was a model. Some of these have been seen, have you seen that picture? Now here's the picture, there's the same picture that's better, has your other shoe dead? No, that's good, yeah. Have you seen this? That's Ernest and Margaret Blumenschein, they're both painting, it's the only picture they ever saw where they were both painting. Hold it right there Ralph, hold it right there. That's a pretty faint. Fancy looking house they have. Yeah, well if you've been in it up in time, you know they bought that house from Dunton, did you know that? Dunton divorced his wife, here's a picture of Burninghouse with his prized fish wearing a tie, happy Christmas from Blooming, and he sent this to everybody he knew, I think

everybody in North America got a picture of this because he was bragging about that fish and a little one over here and his left hand. Where would he go fishing? Real grand. That's in a place you'd catch a fish like that. They fished in towels creak too, but they're diamond fishing, and this is a good picture. In Blooming, Simon Phillips pick up supplies and root the towels in their wagon. Just before they ever got the towels, so this is 18, this is a summer of 1898. Can you tell me again what this is? Can you? I'm shaking when I hold it. This is a picture of Ernest Blumishan and Bert Phillips taking supplies from the mercantile store over to their wagon when they're leaving Denver hitting for towels per blow or the city of towels.

This would be the spring of 1898. Here's Blumishan playing tennis. Notice he has a town. He was an athlete, right? Yeah. But he was five foot six. He got smaller as time went on. He lost over two inches, like so many men do. You know that when the carthers starts shrinking. And this is what was in the Bert Phillips estate, not the Blooming China State. There he is again, that fish. This has been overused to my dear friend, Bert from Blooming, 1948. Bert Phillips. Can you tell us a little bit about their friendship over the ages? Bert Phillips and Ernest Blumishan had a very close friendship.

Their wives were close. Their kids were close. They painted together a lot. They traveled together a lot. They went fishing together and they did everything together right up to the end. And when Bert Phillips voted against Blumishan, it related to being present in the Taoist Society, that caused a little speed bump in their relationship. But after that, they were very close friends again. I think those two were closer than any of the two artists. Gas board and fashion were both Russians. They were close, but not as close as Blumishan and Bert Phillips were. My long friends? Yeah. Well, not lifelong, but from an early, I'm just guessing, but I would say in the 20s, from the 20s until they died, they were together. They both studied abroad.

They both went to the Taoist. They both were Easterners. And I think another reason that they were good friends is that Bert Phillips could not compete with Blumishan. Blumishan was such a great painter. And Bert Phillips struggled to produce a good painting. And he did paint a lot of good paintings, but most of his are not. And the reason was that he couldn't draw. Jiméry and Mars from another fiddler. Can you hold that one? I need a good 30 seconds on these. Can you tell us what that is again? This is a photograph of Ernest Blumishan in his studio holding his palette. And notice the little unpretentious palette he has. And he gave this to, he says, to Mary Lone Morris from another fiddler. Blumishan was a violinist.

And primarily because his father wouldn't fund him in art school unless he took lessons in violin and became a good violinist. And he played a violin all the way up to the end. And he was always pretty good. People are hurting place that he was not exceptional, but a good violinist. This photograph is dated 1926. These are old family photographs, you don't want to tell us how to thank his Helen. There's his father, see the big paintings that Blumishan is painting? What's the artist didn't do that? What was his studio like? Well you'll go in it tomorrow. It was just a big room, cold in the wintertime. He did only by a fireplace and poor Rencon kept furnishing my wood. Here's a photograph that shows what was wrong with the wagon wheel or the wagon broke.

Do you see that spoke right there is broken? As far as I know this is the only copy of that photograph. The other one has been pictured everywhere. Who are we seeing here? The wagon broke about, the wheel broke about, I want to say 17 miles from Tows, something like that. And they couldn't go on. If they continued, all those spokes would break and they'd had a tough time before one of their horses in a thunderstorm was tied to a tree and fell off a bluff and hanged themself. So things weren't too easy and some robbers came to see them, camp there, three or four guys. They pulled the guns out and took a look at these two guys, it's not worth the effort and they rode off. That's what we're looking at, but then when the wagon wheel broke, they were stuck, nobody to fix the wheel and they had a horse.

So Bert Phillips and Bloomingson flew to Corn and Bloomingson lost and Bloomingson had to take the wagon wheel to Towson. If you look at this, it's a pretty big wheel and Bloomingson bitterly complained about not being able to find a position to hold that wheel so that he could get all the way to Tows with that wheel. I replaced the hell it, it hurt. But anyway, he did and fix the wheel, came back and got Phillips and I went into town. And there's something I have here, just a minute. I wanted to read you this, this is an original manuscript by Bert Phillips in 1898 about their trip from Denver to Towson and it says here, he's sitting beside the wagon, Bloomingson has the wheel on his way to Towson, where we are on our way, we are on our long journey

from Denver to Towson and Indian village in New Mexico. From there we may go as far as the city of Mexico and drive through the Indian territory to Cincinnati all the way back which is our destination and the end. So Bert Phillips is making notes. What shall we do, what can we do, the wheel must be fixed or we'll never get out of here. It fell my lot to stay and Blooming prepared to start on with the wheels, settled in one of his horses and we tied it to him firmly but there was no room left to ride. So he started off leaving the heart but you know what makes it good, these things were written when Bert Phillips was sitting there and one that was happening, number and Bert

Phillips had a problem getting paper, we're talking about 1900. But the grocery store had paper sacks, so that's what these things are. These are paper sacks that Bert Phillips would get and tear up and start riding on, look at this. He was ever a bit of space on this paper and it's wonderful the way he could ride it. But this is a history into making and I think they felt that, I think he felt like he had to document what was happening. And I have, there must be six or seven Blooming sign documents that are unpublished, some of them are illustrated, I mean it's wonderful stories and the same thing was done. I must have ten done manuscripts.

And do you think that they knew that this was an important time in history, like an important moment? I think they hoped that it would be. It was certainly important for them. They were green horns, they had never owned a horse before or a wagon. They bought both in Denver and they started out and on the way down there they were passing an old farmer or rancher on the road and the rancher looked at the way the harnesses and the horses were hooked up to the wagon and said stop, you guys are going to kill yourself and start it in on them, something terrible. And took all the harnesses off and re-harnessed the wagon properly because Philips and Blooming sign didn't even know how to hook the, and they said they were so far and said you're going to get killed. So they didn't know what they were doing? No, but they didn't care, you know, this is a wonderful adventure, we're going to go to Mexico City, do you know how far Mexico City is?

And then back to Cincinnati and the wagon, there wasn't even a barbed wire fence between the two places in those days. There were almost no roads, but they didn't care, they were young, they were, they bought a bunch of painting supplies in Denver before they left. I've got to take a time out and change battery. One bright May afternoon, a party of young people said out, is this romantic? It's totally, I mean, the sun was the same way. A typical town's problow in then, whose ancestors were companions of Kit Carson and who maintained a value of stand against the company of American soldiers during the battle at Taurus Pribla in January 1847, in which 45 of the Americans were killed and wounded and blah, blah, blah, blah. He's just going to change something on there real quick. I love this stuff, I can't believe you have all this. Do you want to look at Sharp Sales book, is that worth your time?

Oh yeah. That's really cool. We're going to get to it. Okay. We'll clip this back on in real quick. Okay. You should really stand up. Okay. Okay. It makes you stand up when we do this. We're going to set that stuff down. Can we set it down and then pick it up? Yeah. Can you come in and then set it down? Yeah. Oh, I'll start with this stuff. This is something else. Okay. Don't worry about it. I'm going to be here and you come on over, ready? Okay.

Sir. This is Joseph Sharpe, juicy little sales book in which he listed the paintings that he sold from 1890 until 1950. Here we are in 1901, where he sold J.G. Butler from the Butler Institute. Five paintings for $950. And this just goes on and on with people. Here's Phoebe Hurst, San Francisco, January 1901, bought 79 Indian portraits. Here's Phoebe Hurst, bought a number of paintings. George Eats Alone is that a great name? Flat iron, lady pretty blanket. Wouldn't he like to know these names before Americans translated them into English? Evening chant on and on. And she got about eight or nine paintings for $1,000. And this shows how she paid for them. And how much are any one of those worth now? From $500,000, $2 million, the big ones are million dollars. But there are lots of paintings here that were sold to Rockefeller.

And here's J.G. Butler again, about little bull child, a black feat for $200. Both Cheyenne for $200. There's Bunder again. Here's Phoebe Hurst, what can be any painting she bought at one time in 1904? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen paintings for $5,000. And these were his biggest and best paintings. What kind of paintings were those? Indian, Indian, poor blue scenes and portraits. That's a sweet little book. There's some of Ernest Blumenschein's medals. Medal of Award, 1926, for the Cisterus Contenio International Exposition in Philadelphia, 1926. And were those, can you tell us a little bit about Blumenschein and those awards and what there's meant in the day?

I probably don't understand really what this is. And in those days, the artist entered paintings in competitions. And the ultimate was to be elected to the National Academy of Design in New York. And Mary Green, Blumenschein belonged to it. And then it was many years later too. Ernest Blumenschein was elected, I think, 17 years. He signed a lot of his paintings in A, associate to National Academy. He was a very prestigious thing and you had to be elected by other artists. But the enjoyed competitions at the Salmogundi Club and all those other clubs in New York, there was a lot of competition. Nicholas Fishen won the award, I think, in 1917, at the National Academy of Design. The proctor award, best painting for a painting called Mr. Watts, the engraver, competing with the Ascan School and all the great painters of those, the fish and the name, speak English.

And he won the award. That shows the importance of some of those guys that lived in the house. This is a medal that Blumenschein won at the National Arts Club in New York. It was awarded to Ernest L. Blumenschein for painting, January 1923. And let me show you one other thing. Where is it? This is another medal that the Jews are sharp on. This medal was made by Herman McNeil, who was arguably the greatest sculptor ever lived in this country. This is the silver medal he made a gold one and a bronze one and that's all. Wonderful. I love to feel of these things. Don't tell them museum people that did this way because I don't have any quite gloves on.

I didn't have time to see it, could you put it back in there? We put it back in the focus on it. It's a second to focus on it. Now you can rub it. Do you want me to do what? You can rub it now. I can talk about it. Yeah, you can rub it. You can rub it. Please don't tell any museum curators that I touched this way. Okay. But it feels, I want you to touch it. Put your hand in here. That's cool. I had this cover specially made so that I could show these medals. I have another one. The short one into Colorado School in Paris in 1888 or whatever it was. So in their day, this was what? This was a big deal. This was winning a medal at an art competition with the greatest painters of the day that had studied, you know, with the greatest painters in Europe and competition with the great French impressionists in Charlottesville and a lot of

Gaspard worked for Boogleron at off Boogleron in Paris. And they knew Matisse and Renoir and those guys and studied with the best teachers of those days. Carl Moran, Munich and Antwerp and so in our contest, competing with those kind of people, it was quite a remarkable event. And the three places, first, second and third, Gold Silver and Bronze. And boy, if you could walk away with the medal, why? They had bragging rights forever. And don't think they didn't use them because they did. And they were coming from the backwaters, right? In towels, right? And you can imagine how Sharp and Kausfeld, when Blumersign said they were sharp story painters, which they were. But don't tell them that. And Sharp, when Sharp died, they had a memorials that a funeral in Pasadena, where he died. But then a few days later, they had a memorial service in Taus. And Blumersign gave the eulogy.

And he said glowing, wonderful things about Blumersign. About a week later, he wrote a letter to the director of the museum in Santa Fe and said, the sharp had nothing to do with organizing a towel. So I have that original letter. As a matter of fact, I published it in this book. You want to look at that? Yeah. And when I wrote my, let's see which book this is. This is the wrong book. I've got four minutes on the disk. When I wrote my first book on Sharp, I didn't know what to do about that letter, because I have the original letter. And I said, I'm not going to use it. But then the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. And so when I wrote my second book on Sharp, I decided that I was going to talk about it. A personal note.

In 1984, when I finished writing the first edition of this book, I thought with myself about whether I should include a post-script to Blumersign's touching eulogy. I decided not to. And for most 22 years since, I have regretted that decision, arguing that I had not, somehow not, I'd let Sharp down. So now I will offer that post-script into a form of a letter in my personal archive. On September the 6th, 1953, eight days after he gave such a poignant speech at Sharp's Memorial Service in Taos, Blumersign wrote a pen and ink letter to Reginald Fisher, director of the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe. Blumersign was concerned that credit for forming the Taos Society would be given to Sharp. And here's the letter. For God's sake, do not give Sharp, do get Sharp's place correct. What he told me in Paris had little influence except to induce Phil and me

to want to go see Taos' problem if we ever pass that way. As I stated in a meeting, Sharp had visited Taos in 1896 for two weeks, not the first artist by any means. And we have records of artists that going back to 1850. And Sharp never came back to Taos for ten years. Phil and I arrived in 1898 and we were interested in with the life and aspect of the innings as well as the beauty in the background. So we sold our wagon and blah, blah, blah. Jumped all over Sharp here. Eight days after he gave a wonderful eulogy and Taos saying the Sharp was one of the great painters of the American Indian. Great historian. But it's a long letter. It goes clear over here. And so it was over. He had come across the decades with a brush and an easel and an unshakable faith in the transcendental and redeeming values of art. He had seen the unpredictable turns of history dark and bright and had seen the country change.

Yet he remained in love with the past. He was neither a prophet, filled with the spiritual insight and our genius blazing with new artistic pathways. But simply as Blumashan said, a recorder seeking to express some small part of the change of an unknown destiny of our land. In remaining faithful to his purpose, Joseph Henry Sharp left to the future an important and lasting legacy. And now he belonged completely to the past he loved so much. And what is that legacy? Portraying that era in our history for people to see 10,000 years from now. But that's why a lot of people can't handle abstract art. And I'm one of Eric Sloan.