American & European Art

Provenance:

Hammer Galleries, New York (as Bridget in Red)

Private Collection, acquired from the above, by 1993

Thence by descent to the present owner

Lot note:

A chief proponent of the Ashcan School, Robert Henri's true artistic spirit is understood through his portraits. Images of individuals from all classes, ages, and nationalities, his portraits are principally concerned with capturing the essence of his sitters, who he called “my people.” The influence of his teacher Thomas Anschutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, who he studied under in 1885, contributed substantially to the development of Henri's art, particularly regarding his focus on social realism and urban life. Together with other fellow artists of the Ashcan School, including John Sloan, George Bellows, William Glackens, and Everett Shinn, Henri sought out immigrant subjects for his urban realist paintings and illustrations. Additionally, the artist’s eventual adoption of a plain background and limited palette of colors, using either a three-color palette base or pairs of complementary colors, further allowed him to reveal his subjects and present them as they really were, without artifice.

The artist’s continuous search for authentic subjects led him and his wife, Marjorie Organ, to visit Ireland, eventually discovering the fishing villages of Keel and Dooagh on Achill Island, a remote location off the western coast. They first visited in June 1913 and stayed until September. World War I and financial troubles intervened, and the couple was unable to visit again until 1924. They subsequently purchased a cottage named Corrymore and visited every spring or summer for the next four years. It was here that Henri created some of his most memorable portraits of Irish children. Painted during his last stay, Girl in a Red Dress is a masterful example of his later works in Ireland, which focused primarily on color and form. Valerie Leeds explains, "Henri explored formal and abstract ideas of color and compositional harmonies in a virtual shorthand vocabulary. In these paintings, he used a more limited tonal range, with one or two foundation colors to build the composition." ("The Portraits of Robert Henri" in My People: The Portraits of Robert Henri, p. 40) In the present work, the artist builds his portrait primarily in shades of red and black, which create the perfect complement to the sitter’s blonde hair and light blue eyes. Animated, broad brushstrokes define the background and dramatically contrast with the girl's beautifully rendered, rosy face. Girl in a Red Dress highlights Henri’s ability to paint the vitality and unique character of his sitters. It is a captivating example of the portraits for which he is best known.