Henri Robert oil painting American abstract art paintings

Robert Henri
American Ashcan School painter
born 1865 - died 1929

Student of: Thomas Pollock Anschutz (1851-1912).
Teacher of: George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Rockwell Kent (1882-1971).

1865 Born to John and Theresa Gatewood Cozad. Members of the family all took on different surnames following a family scandal: John Sr. had fled Nebraska, the family’s second home, after killing a man in self defense.
1883 The family moved to New York, then to Atlantic City, New Jersey
1886 Enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
1889 - 1891 Lives in Europe for 3 years
1892 Moves back to Philadelphia
1895 Makes his third trip to Europe
1900 - 1902 Teaches at the Veltin School in New York
1902 - 1908 Teaches at the New York School of Art
1915 - 1927 Teaches at the Art Students League
1929 Dies at the age of sixty-four.

Robert Henri was born Robert Henry Cozad in Cincinnati, in 1865, the son of a professional gambler and businessman. In 1881 Robert Henri accompanied his family to Denver. When his father was indicted for manslaughter a year later the Cozads changed their name and fled to Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1886 Henri enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Robert Henri studied under Thomas Anshutz, Thomas Hovenden, and James B. Kelly. In 1888 Robert Henri went to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian under Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. During the summers Robert Henri painted in Brittany and Barbizon, and visited Italy prior to being admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1891. Robert Henri returned to Philadelphia late that year, and in 1892 resumed studying at the academy. Robert Henri also began his long and influential career as an art teacher at the School of Design for Women, where Robert Henri taught until 1895. During this period Robert Henri met the young newspaper illustrators who would later achieve fame as members of The Eight: John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn. Robert Henri made regular trips to Paris where Robert Henri was particularly influenced by Edouard Manet, Frans Hals, and Diego Velázquez. In 1899, one year after his marriage to Linda Craige, one of his paintings was purchased for the Musée National du Luxembourg.- Henri Robert oil painting American abstract art paintings- Henri Robert bio, American oil paintings abstract art, Henri Robert, abstract oil paintings American of Henri Robert painting, abstract painting, abstract art oil paintings.

In 1900 Henri settled in New York and taught at the New York School of Art from 1902 to 1908. Robert Henri gradually began to reject the genteel traditions of academic painting and impressionism, and turned his attention to urban realist subjects executed in a bold, painterly style. In 1906 Robert Henri was elected to the National Academy of Design, and that summer Robert Henri taught in Spain. When the academy refused to exhibit works by Henri's circle in its 1907 annual show, Robert Henri resolved to organize an independent exhibition. The result was the famous show of The Eight held at the Macbeth Gallery in February 1908. That year Robert Henri married his second wife, the illustrator Marjorie Organ. In 1910 Robert Henri organized the first "Exhibition of Independent Artists," between 1911 and 1919 Robert Henri arranged jury-free exhibitions at the MacDowell Club, and in 1913 Robert Henri helped the Association of American Painters and Sculptors organize the Armory Show. Henri's influence began to wane after the ascent of European modernism, although Robert Henri continued to win numerous awards. Robert Henri taught at the Art Students League from 1915 until 1927.

Although Henri was an important portraitist and figure painter, Robert Henri is best remembered as a progressive and influential teacher. His ideas on art were collected by former pupil Margery Ryerson and published as The Art Spirit (Philadelphia, 1923). Robert Henri died in 1929 at the age of sixty-four.

A revolution in American art circles was led by Robert Henri (1865-1929), instigator of what was referred to as The Eight and the revolutionary black gang. Henri, along with John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, James Preston, Edward Davis, and Charles Redfield, held academic and officially sanctioned art in contempt. They complained that it was cloistered, effete, monotonous, and fenced in with tasseled ropes and weighed down with bronze plates.- Henri Robert oil painting American abstract art paintings- Henri Robert bio, American oil paintings abstract art, Henri Robert, abstract oil paintings American of Henri Robert painting, abstract painting, abstract art oil paintings.
Related Results

* Photographic flaneurs
* Murray Hantman, American...
* In pursuit of a higher truth:...
* Poetry in black and white;...

Most Popular Articles
in Reference

* "The Black Dick": ...
* Kissing: fast facts
* Pope fears Bush is ...
* World's Fattest ...
* Mighty heart, weak drama

These young artistic rebels believed that American art should be public in the broadest sense of the word and have relevance to the people, not just to art experts. According to Henri, American artists had too long been under the sway of the standards and subject matter of European high art. Henri and The Eight challenged the enshrining of European aesthetics. Following in the footsteps of novelists such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and the essayist Henry David Thoreau, who celebrated what they called an American spirit, Henri turned his artistic vision to native themes. By doing so, Robert Henri insisted that the unique qualities of America should shape its artists and its art.
Advertisement

Henri was born Robert Henry Cozad on June 25, 1865 in Nebraska. Robert Henri studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Henri became fascinated by the realism of his teacher, Thomas Eakins, who counseled his students to study their own country and to portray its types. To the dismay of the academy, Eakins insisted that his students paint from nude models rather than from plaster molds. Eakins’s rebelliousness against the decorum of academic art cost him his job but won the admiration of Henri, who continued his studies with Eakins’s gifted student, Thomas Anshutz. In 1888 Henri left for Paris and enrolled in the bastion of classicism, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, for two years. While in Paris the radical Henri found Post-Impressionism, the European challenge to academic art, uninteresting.

The Eight

When Henri returned to Philadelphia in 1891, a friend introduced him to two newspaper illustrators, William Glackens and John Sloan. They, along with other renegade artists, made Henri’s studio at 806 Walnut Street in downtown Philadelphia a gathering place. At these meetings the group discussed music, literature, art, and, most of all, the stifling confines of the academy. Unlike more institutional gatherings of artists, such as those of Philadelphia’s Tile Club or the Art Club, The Eight’s meetings were run in the spirit of a European café—spontaneous and casual discussions. As newspaper artists, Sloan, Glackens, Luks, and Shinn illustrated the city’s disasters in quick sketches. Henri found their perspective refreshingly honest. Robert Henri encouraged them to paint in oil, rather than in charcoal, and to see urban America as a worthy subject for serious art. As a result, The Eight became known for their psychological portraiture, their eye for detail, their sympathy with humanity, and their use of a drab, realistic urban palette.

Returned to Paris

In 1898 Henri married and went to Paris for his honeymoon. His compositions from this trip were a series of broadly painted figures that stood in contrast to simple silhouettes, and scenes in which shadow and light figured prominently. While these paintings were rejected by the progressive Salon des Indépendants, the French government purchased one of them, Snow in 1899. When Robert Henri returned to the United States, Henri and his wife settled in New York City, a place Robert Henri felt was more hospitable to his artistic vision than was Philadelphia. Henri took a job as an instructor at the New York School of Art, or the Chase School. Soon many of his friends joined him. While teaching in New York City, Robert Henri continued to think about and challenge the place of art in the modern world. Henri believed that art should be realistic. Robert Henri filled his canvases with unglamorous models and urban action scenes. At the same time, Henri believed that the camera freed artists from the obligation to paint realistically. Artists, Robert Henri felt, should not paint for details but concentrate on the subjective underpinnings of the scene, such as the expression of the model and the feelings that the scene invoked.- Henri Robert oil painting American abstract art paintings- Henri Robert bio, American oil paintings abstract art, Henri Robert, abstract oil paintings American of Henri Robert painting, abstract painting, abstract art oil paintings.

Gained a Reputation

In the 1900s The Eight were known as the New York Realists. Many critics found their work to be joyless and unhealthy; others found it a compelling counterpart to the exposé journalism of the muckrakers and the social realism of novelists such as Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris. Despite their distance from academic art, the conservative National Academy of Design had accepted all of them as members by 1905. Two years later, the National Academy of Design appointed Henri to judge its prestigious spring exhibition. His friends’ excitement at finally having one of their own officiate such an exhibit was soon crushed when Henri discovered that Robert Henri had no meaningful say in the evaluation process. The jury gave two of his own paintings a number two rating, meaning they were not to be hung on eye level, but either above or below. Henri was furious and quickly withdrew his canvases from the show.

The titles of oil painting old master Robert Henri