Featuring Robert Henri
Born on this day in 1865, artist Robert Henri became a famous crusader against academic conservatism.After study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Henri enrolled at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1891 he settled in Philadelphia, where he met four young newspaper illustrators—John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Luks—to whom he introduced the work of Hals, Manet, and Velázquez, the European masters who most influenced his work. Following a trip to Europe in 1901, Henri moved to New York, where he was soon joined by his four Philadelphia colleagues.
He began teaching at the Chase School but became impatient with its traditional artistic approach and opened his own, more progressive school. Over the years his students included Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Morgan Russell, and Stuart Davis. In 1908 Henri and his group staged the legendary exhibition of The Eight (sometimes called the Ash Can School) at the Macbeth Gallery, and in 1910 he helped organize the Independent Artists show.…
This painting, Cumulus Clouds, East River, is a depiction of the East River pier at 58th Street in New York City, and shows Henri following his own dictum: "Pick out the beautiful wherever it is unexpected." Despite the raw subject matter, Henri achieves a subtle amalgam of colors, reflections, and atmospheric effects, which places this work at the culmination of a series of tonal, outdoor cityscapes he began during the late 1890s in Paris. Like the Paris studies, or pochades, Henri painted this scene on the spot, from a window of his studio overlooking the East River.
Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996). and Sharon Rolfson Udall, Andrew Connors, "Artists' Biographies." Art in New Mexico, 1900-1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1986, p. 198.
Pictured: Robert Henri, 1865–1929, Cumulus Clouds, East River, 1901–2, oil, 25 3/4 x 32 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Partial and promised gift of Mrs. Daniel Fraad in memory of her husband.
Born on this day in 1865, artist Robert Henri became a famous crusader against academic conservatism.After study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Henri enrolled at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1891 he settled in Philadelphia, where he met four young newspaper illustrators—John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Luks—to whom he introduced the work of Hals, Manet, and Velázquez, the European masters who most influenced his work. Following a trip to Europe in 1901, Henri moved to New York, where he was soon joined by his four Philadelphia colleagues.