Robert Henri
American, 1865-1929
In their youth, Henri and his brother John Jr. only lived in Cozad during the summers and attended the Chickering Classical and Scientific Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The family lived in Cozad for approximately ten years until an altercation with a local rancher, resulting in the death of the rancher, necessitating the family to assume new identities. Mr. Cozad became Richard Henry Lee, Mrs. Cozad became Tessa Lee, John Anthony Cozad became Frank Southrn (correct spelling) and Robert became Robert Henri (pronounced Hen-rye). Fearing for his life, John J. Cozad left town the night of the shooting in October 1882. Robert and his mother remained in Cozad long enough to sell the family home in 1883. The family reunited in Atlantic City, NJ where Mr. Lee had purchased property on the Boardwalk. Robert enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Through the years Henri studied at several institutions and become a renowned artist, art teacher and author (The Art Spirit). He had a big influence on art in America by introducing impressionism to America.
In 1886, Henri enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1888, he traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian, where he studied under the academic realist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, came to admire greatly the work of Francois Millet, and embraced Impressionism. He was admitted into the École des Beaux Arts. He visited Brittany and Italy during this period. At the end of 1891, he returned to Philadelphia, studying under Robert Vonnoh at the Pennsylvania Academy. In 1892, he began teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, enjoying immediate success at the school. By 1895, Henri had come to reconsider his earlier love of Impressionism, calling it a "new academicism." He was urging his friends and proteges to create a new, more realistic art that would speak directly to their own time and experience. He wanted paint to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow, that froze on Broadway in the winter, as real a human product as sweat, carrying the unsurpressed smell of human life. Inspired by this outlook eventually came to be called the Ashcan School of American art. They spurned academic painting and Impressionism, calling attention to slum conditions. For several years, Henri divided his time between Philadelphia and Paris, where he met the Canadian artist James Wilson Morrice. Morrice introduced Henri to the practice of painting pochades on tiny wood panels that could be carried in a coat pocket along with a small kit of brushes and oil. This method facilitated the kind of spontaneous depictions of urban scenes which would come to be associated with his mature style. In 1906, Henri was elected to the National Academy of Design, but when painters in his circle were rejected for the Academy's 1907 exhibition, he accused fellow jurors of bias and walked off the jury. In 1910, with the help of John Sloan and Walt Kuhn, Henri organized the Exhibition of Independent Artists, the first nonjuried, no-prize show in the U.S.
Henri made several trips to Ireland's western coast and rented Corrymore House near Dooagh, a small village on Achill Island, in 1913. Every spring and summer for the following years he would paint the children of Dooagh. Henri's portraits of children, seen today as the most sentimental aspect of his body of work, were popular at the time and sold well. During the summers of 1916, 1917 and 1922, Henri went to Santa Fe, New Mexico to paint. He found that locale as inspirational as the countryside of Ireland had been. He became an important figure in the Santa Fe art scene and persuaded the director of the state art museum to adopt an open-door exhibition policy.
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