Robert Henri

Robert Henri (1865-1929)

Robert Henri was born Robert Henry Cozad in Cozaddale, Ohio, a village near Cincinnati that had been founded by his father, the land promoter Richard Henry Cozad. In 1873 Richard moved his family to another of his pioneer towns, Cozad, Nebraska, but they were forced to leave in 1882 following a range war in which Richard shot a cattleman. Fearing arrest, Richard and his family changed their names and moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1886 the renamed Robert Henri began his art studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Hovenden and Thomas Anschutz. Henri then went to France to continue his studies, enrolling at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1888. During his first French sojourn, Henri discovered the works of Edouard Manet, which profoundly influenced his figurative style. In 1891 Henri returned to Philadelphia, where he opened his own studio and began teaching at the Women's School of Design (now the Moore College of Art). It was then that he befriended William Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, and George Luks, his later compatriots in the Ashcan School. In 1897 Henri was honored with a one-man exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy. The following year he married Linda Craige and returned with her to Paris, where they remained until 1900. This second European trip included visits to Brittany and Madrid and marked Henri's growing interest in the works of Whistler and Velázquez. In 1900 the Henris settled permanently in New York, where Henri executed a series of brilliant city scenes before returning to the figurative works for which he is now best known. In 1902 Henri had his first one-person exhibition in New York, at Macbeth Gallery, and began teaching at the New York School of Art. Following the tragic early death of his first wife in 1905, Henri married Marjorie Organ in 1908, the same year the group of young American urban Realists known as The Eight first exhibited together, at Macbeth Gallery.

Throughout his life, Henri loved to travel and to explore new subjects. During the summers, he visited Holland, Spain, Ireland, New Mexico, and Maine. Henri was considered one of the finest art teachers in the United States; in 1923 he published the still-influential “The Art Spirit”, a collection of his teachings and sayings compiled by his student Margery Ryerson. Henri maintained meticulous "Record Books" (private collection) on his paintings, which remain the primary source of information about his work.

“The Imaginative Boy (Nelson)”, 1915

Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 20 in. (61.3 x 63.5 cm)

Signed (lower right): Robert Henri; inscribed (verso): 22J / ROBERT HENRI / An Imaginative Boy.

Harriet Russell Stanley Fund (1950.4)

Thanks to an erroneous notation in the files of New York's Macbeth Gallery, at least two generations of viewers have believed that the boy portrayed in this painting was an Irish child by the name of Tom Cafferty who lived in the village of Dooagh on Achill Island, one of Robert Henri's favorite painting spots, which he first visited in 1913. The artist's own “Record Books,” however, clearly identifies “The Imaginative Boy” as a gypsy named Nelson whom Henri painted in Ogunquit, Maine, during the summer of 1915.

Maine, like Ireland, was one of Henri's favorite summer resorts, beginning with his first trip to Monhegan Island in 1903. In the summer of 1915, however, he had been warned away from the island because of a World War I German submarine scare. Instead, he chose to visit the inland town of Ogunquit, where he initially languished, utterly bored in the absence of the colorful human subjects he preferred.

Some days into his visit, Henri discovered a band of gypsies encamped on the town's outskirts. Soon afterward, Ogunquit was treated to the sight of a steady stream of gypsies making their way to Henri's studio, "bringing their tangle haired, unkempt children" to sit for the artist. (1)

One of these gypsies was a girl with the unlikely name of Patience Serious, who is immortalized in Henri's portrayal of her (1915; Cincinnati Art Museum). Another was the more mischievious Nelson of “The Imaginative Boy”, with his rumpled blue overalls and jacket (their red epaulets and sash matching the bright redness of his lips), his sparkling dark eyes, and his hands stuffed decisively in his pockets. In the space behind the child, Henri used the characteristic quickly slashed green and white notations that he favored for suggesting the coastal Maine landscape.

BWC

Bibliography:

William Yarrow and Louis Bouché, eds., “Robert Henri: His Life and Works” (New York: Boni and Liverwright, 1921); Robert Henri, “The Art Spirit”, comp. Margery Ryerson (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1923; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, 1984); William Innes Homer, “Robert Henri and His Circle” (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969); Bennard B. Perlman, “Robert Henri: Painter”, exhib. cat. (Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1984); Bruce W. Chambers, “Robert Henri (1865-1929): Selected Paintings”, exhib. cat. (New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1986).

Notes:

1. Perlman, Robert Henri, p. 129.