Robert Henri: His Life and Art

Robert Henri was certainly an important figure in the development of American art away from the purely academic style that was beginning to stifle it as it had nearly done in Europe. In France the impressionist movement had altered European art forever, but the United States was not very fast in accepting the change. However, the advent of photography, with its exact images, was making the photographic style of art obsolete. Eventually Henri would lead the way to a more recognizable modern studio style of painting and of teaching, but his early years in the American Midwest certainly belied that brilliant future. The chance fight that led to his father being charged with murder in Nebraska caused the family to change their last names, with his father becoming a Lee and Robert becoming a Henri (he always pronounced it Hen-ry, not On-rie, as one might expect) in order to avoid detection. The family moved east, with Henri studying art in Philadelphia and eventually in Europe. In the mean time his father was cleared, but the family never changed back to their original name of Cozad, possibly out of fear that someone might take revenge on them. Henri had his blind spots as he failed to see Matisse and Cezanne as the talents they were, but he almost single-handedly pushed American painting and the teaching of art away from neo-classicism into a distinctly American form of Impressionism, and this opened the way for further movement. For all of this, plus his many innovations in the teaching of art that we now take for granted, we owe him a great debt, as well as for his excellent book of observations on the practice of visual art - "The Art Spirit." In "Robert Henri: His Life and Art" Bennard Perlman has captured the excitement of this sea change in American art and illustrated with many of Robert Henri's best canvases. I recommend this book highly for those who would understand the period between Winslow Homer and before Georgia O'Keeffe in American art.