Robert Henri is a supremely gifted painter of facial anatomy and, one might say, the very essence of humankind, one human expression at a time. I come back to his portraits time after time, determined to capture at least some small fragment of the magic of his renderings -- especially of mouths and eyes. The feature image for this posting -- a detail from a painting of his entitled "The Young Girl" -- is, I think, a stellar example of captured essence, as perhaps only the gifted Robert Henri could do it.
But of course that detail came from just one of innumerable portraits done with such brilliance by Henri over many decades of painting. His multifaceted works can be found in renowned museums across America and Europe, and we as New Englanders are most fortunate to have one of his finest examples within easy driving distance from Seacoast New Hampshire and Southern Maine -- in the Currier Museum in Manchester.
As a loyal, passionately devoted member of the Currier, I make time to sketch around, from gallery to gallery, every time I visit the place. Then, when I'm done sketching, I drop by the museum's magnificent Winter Garden Cafe, where I have tea and a cookie or two. Don't allow me to mislead you, though! Delicious, beautifully prepared meals, served by wonderfully friendly professionals, are available, too! And one can linger and linger -- or even sketch and read and reflect, which is what I always do when I'm at the Winter Garden. (Where, on Sundays at lunchtime, there's live music!) Altogether, a visit to the Currier always makes for a lively and thought-provoking adventure.
Then, once I've had my fill of food and beverage and all the rest, I go back out to the galleries and sketch again. And in that second session, I never fail to try again to capture the essences of the only Robert Henri portrait in the Currier Museum's Permanent collection: his quietly powerful, masterfully rendered "Mary Ann With Her Basket."
What a tour de force that little* painting is, and how fortunate the Currier Museum is to have it here in its Permanent Collection, where the public can come at its leisure, over and over again, to enjoy and learn from it!
And now, about Robert Henri's painting, from which so many lessons can be learned. You'll no doubt have your very own learnable ideas, but here, for what they're worth, are a few of mine:
(1) A painting is not and never will be a photograph. So don't feel obligated to render your painting to look as if it were a photograph -- unless, of course, that's what you intended to achieve all along. After all, "Photographic Realism" -- take Richard Estes or Chuck Close, for example -- is an increasingly popular, highly demanding genre. And there can't be anything wrong with learning to master that and the more traditional, more painterly genre. The more skills you can add to your arsenal as a visual artist, the merrier! And I, for one -- always an idealist, full of healthy ambition -- love working toward mastery in both approaches to portraiture.
(2) The human eye sees any person or thing quickly on first glance, which means that what you're seeing in real life will undoubtedly be more blurred than it will ever be photographically 'perfect. Most artists want what they paint to have that exhilarating sense of movement -- of immediacy -- of having captured a fragile, evanescent, precious moment in time.
(3) A portrait -- a successful one, anyway -- is not a potted plant. Nor should it be treated as one. Living people, whether at a certain moment vigorously active or relatively motionless, are bristling with energy -- the miraculous juices of life -- and they're overflowing with unspoken emotions! It's your job as a visual artist to give the person whose portrait you're painting a genuine voice -- one worth hearing, absorbing, revisiting -- and of course treasuring!
-- Ross Alan Bachelder, www.artsaplenty.me
PS: *Don't be discouraged by the diminutive size of Henri's painting at the Currier, which is currently on display in the highest level of the museum, to the left of the bannisters. If you have the good fortune, one day, to be in the same room with da Vinci's Mona Lisa -- and I have -- you'll learn right away, to your surprise, that she's much, much smaller than you might have expected her to be. One should never forget that small can be beautiful, too!