Robert Henri
Robert Henri
1865 - 1929
American painter and teacher (see fig.). He changed his name in 1883 after his father killed someone; in honour of his French ancestry, Henri adopted his own middle name as a surname, taking the French spelling but insisting all his life that it be pronounced in the American vernacular. After living with his family in Denver, CO, and New York, in 1886 he entered the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, where he studied with Thomas Anshutz and Thomas Hovenden. In 1888 he attended the Académie Julian in Paris, where he received criticism from the French painters William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. He returned to Philadelphia in 1891 and painted in an Impressionist manner, for example Girl Seated by the Sea (1893; Mr and Mrs Raymond J. Horowitz priv. col., see Homer, pl. 1).
In 1895 Henri returned to Europe and adopted a dark-toned, broadly brushed style influenced by Velázquez, Frans Hals and the early paintings of Manet. His portrait studies in this style were accepted in the Paris Salons of 1896 and 1897. Through a one-man exhibition in Philadelphia in 1897, he came to the attention of William Merritt Chase, who introduced Henri into the New York art world. In 1900 he established himself in New York and began teaching at the New York School of Art, founded by Chase, until 1908, when he established his own school.
At this early stage Henri was helping younger artists in their struggle for independence against the New York art establishment. By 1906 when he was elected to the National Academy of Design, he had begun to undermine its authority. Angered by the restrictive exhibition policies of the Academy, Henri helped organize an independent exhibition in 1908 at the Macbeth Galleries, New York, of a group of artists who came to be known as THE EIGHT (II). Henri also helped organize the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910. Henri’s chief followers were a group of artist newspaper illustrators whom he had encouraged to become painters: John Sloan, William J. Glackens, George Luks and Everett Shinn. They formed the core of the group later dubbed the ASHCAN SCHOOL, who painted with bold, bravura brushwork that imparted a certain spontaneity to their works. For subject-matter they turned to the vitality of everyday urban life in New York, for example West 57th Street (1902; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.) by Henri.
Henri painted mainly portraits and landscapes, using impasto brushwork and strong chiaroscuro, as in Laughing Child (1907; New York, Whitney) and The Masquerade Dress: Portrait of Mrs Robert Henri (1911; New York, Met.). After 1909 his paintings became progressively more colourful as he experimented with the techniques of painter and colour theorist Hardesty Maratta (b 1864) (e.g. Mary Fanton Roberts, 1917; New York, Met.). Henri’s reputation was, however, based on his ability as a teacher and leader of the Ashcan school. His ideas were disseminated further in The Art Spirit (1923), a collection of his lectures, precepts and attitudes towards art. [M. Sue Kendall. "Henri, Robert." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T037549.]
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French, 1864 - 1901