Musée No:583.134
Regular price £25.00Francine (‘lovey’)
Artist: Robert Henri
Date : 1921
Robert Henri (1865 –1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against American academic art, as reflected by the conservative National Academy of Design. Together with a small team of enthusiastic followers, he pioneered the Ashcan School of American realism, depicting urban life in an uncompromisingly brutalist style. By the time of the Armory Show, America's first large-scale introduction to European Modernism (1913), Henri was mindful that his own representational technique was being made to look dated by new movements such as Cubism, though he was still ready to champion avant-garde painters such as Henri Matisse and Max Weber. Henri taught his students to "work quickly. Don’t stop for anything but the essential .... It’s the spirit of the thing that counts" (Henri diary, August 25, 1926, entry).
This painting is unusual in that he reworked it at least 4 times to repaint certain aspects. He wrote in his diary “‘The reason for the making of these notes is that I like the picture very much and wish to remember it in all details. Its character, color, composition, painting, drawing – all very free and constructive.’” Generally, he worked very fast and didn’t go back to paintings.
