ON VIEW

Robert Henri is an important figure in twentieth-century American realism. The son of a professional-gambler-turned-real-estate-promoter, Henri grew up in Ohio, Nebraska, and Colorado before moving with his family to the East Coast. Settling in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Henri began to paint his first oils and watercolors about 1885. By 1886 he had enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Study in Paris soon followed, but after meeting with disappointment in the official French schools, Henri found himself pursuing Impressionism and more progressive movements.

Back in the United States by 1891, Henri gained a number of artistic disciples during regular meetings held in his Philadelphia studio. After a second extended stay in France, the artist in 1900 moved to New York City, taking old friends with him and making new acquaintances. With Henri as their leader and chief apologist, these artists began to depict subjects drawn from New York's underclass. Their paintings of the urban poor were rejected as distasteful by the art establishment. Undaunted, Henri began to stage his own exhibitions, beginning with the famous Eight Independent Painters, held in 1908 at New York's Macbeth Galleries. Derisive critics dubbed Henri's group "the Ashcan School," but others recognized the originality of their work. Although Henri's brand of realism would soon be eclipsed by Cubism and other avant-garde styles, Ashcan modernism did much to shake American art out of its academic torpor at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ironically, Henri turned his back on newer styles and spent much of his later career teaching and painting portrait commissions. The artist died in 1929.

Toward the end of his life, Henri spent as much as half the year living in Ireland on Achill Island. In 1925 he purchased a house that he had previously rented there, and over the next several years, he devoted himself to painting numerous portraits of local children. One of these, Mary Ann Cafferty, is probably the subject of the Currier's Mary Ann with Her Basket.

Mary Ann is shown to be about ten years old. Wearing a pink smock over a black dress and holding a rectangular basket in her arms, she gazes at the viewer with large, dark eyes. Her serious expression is framed by wavy black hair tied back in a pink ribbon. In typical Henri fashion, both figure and background are executed with a dashing brushstroke that infuses the canvas with dynamism and vitality.

As with Henri's other portraits of children there is little that is sentimental or indulgent in Mary Ann with Her Basket. The sense of frankness that characterizes the sitter stems in part from Henri's realist bent, yet it is also a testament to the respect accorded to children by the artist. While living in Ireland, he established a bond of trust with local boys and girls, enabling him to paint images that are notable for their easy dignity and naturalism. Henri himself was acutely aware of the ability of children to discern the genuineness of adults, and in his well-known treatise, The Art Spirit, he stated: "If you paint children you must have no patronizing attitude toward them. Whoever approaches a child without humility . . . and without infinite respect, misses in his judgment of what is before him . . ."(1)

Henri painted Mary Ann Cafferty on a number of occasions between 1925 and 1928. Based on the apparent age of the sitter in the Currier portrait, it has been suggested that Mary Ann with Her Basket was probably painted in 1926, or perhaps a year earlier. Other versions include Pink Pinafore: Mary Ann Cafferty (1926, University of Nebraska Art Galleries) and The Pink Ribbon (1927, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Mary Ann with Her Basket was acquired by the Currier Museum of Art in 1939.

VSD




NOTE

1. Robert Henri quoted in Bennard Perlman et al., Robert Henri: Painter, ex. cat. (Delaware Art Museum, 1984), p. 157.

REFERENCES

William Innes Homer. Robert Henri and His Circle. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969.

Bennard Perlman et al. Robert Henri: Painter. Ex. cat. Delaware Art Museum, 1984.