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Today is the birthday of Robert Henri (Robert Henry Cozad; Cincinnati, Ohio; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929 New York City); painter and teacher.  He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School of American realism and an organizer of the group known as “The Eight,” a loose association of artists who protested the restrictive exhibition practices of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design.Henri was a distant cousin of the painter Mary Cassatt.  In 1871, Henri’s father, John J. Cozad, founded the town of Cozaddale, Ohio. In 1873, the family moved west to Nebraska, where his father founded the town of Cozad.  In October 1882, Henri’s father became embroiled in a dispute with a rancher, Alfred Pearson, over the right to pasture cattle on land claimed by the family.  When the dispute turned physical, Cozad shot Pearson fatally with a pistol.  Cozad was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but the mood of the town turned against him.  He fled to Denver, Colorado, and the rest of the family followed shortly afterwards.  In order to disassociate themselves from the scandal, family members changed their names.  The father became known as Richard Henry Lee, and his sons posed as adopted children under the names Frank Southern and Robert Earl Henri (pronounced “hen rye”). In 1883, the family moved to New York City, then to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the young artist completed his first paintings.

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.

Gallery

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  Portrait of Carl Gustav Waldeck, 1896 – Saint Louis Art Museum

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  Woman in Manteau, 1898 – Brooklyn Museum

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  The Blue Kimono, 1909 – New Orleans Museum of Art

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  The Dancer, 1910

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  Dutch Girl, 1910 (photograph from 1910)

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  Figure in Motion, 1913

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  Mildred Clarke von Kienbusch, 1914, Princeton University Art Museum

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  Tam Gan, 1914. Albright-Knox Art Gallery

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  The Beach Hat, 1914, oil on canvas, The Detroit Institute of Arts

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  “Edna Smith in a Japanese Wrap”, 1915, Indianapolis Museum of Art

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  Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916, Whitney Museum of American Art

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  Portrait of Fay Bainter, 1918

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  Mata Moana, 1920

   

  Quotations

  • “It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist’s ability to see well into what is before him.”
  • “Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life’s experience.”
  • “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.”
  • “Different men are moved or left cold by lines according to the difference in their natures. What moves you is beautiful to you.”
  • “There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.”

  And today is the birthday of Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (Nantes, France; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956 Paris); painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet. His earliest works, from 1900 to 1904, were influenced by the Neo-impressionism of Georges Seurat and Henri-Edmond Cross. Between 1904 and 1907 Metzinger worked in the Divisionist and Fauvist styles with a strong Cézannian component, leading to some of the first proto-Cubist works.

  Metzinger married Lucie Soubiron in Paris on 30 December 1909.

  Gallery

  

   1912, Danseuse au café (Dancer in a café), oil on canvas, 146.1 x 114.3 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Published in Au Salon d’Automne “Les Indépendants” 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d’Automne

   

  

   ca. 1906, Coucher de Soleil No. 1 (Landscape), oil on canvas, 72.5 x 100 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

  

   1906, La danse (Bacchante), oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm. At the outbreak of World War I this painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at Hôtel Drouot in 1921

  

   1907, Paysage coloré aux oiseaux aquatiques, oil on canvas, 74 x 99 cm, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

  

   1908–1909, Baigneuses (Bathers), illustrated in Gelett Burgess, The Wild Men of Paris, The Architectural Record, Document 3, May 1910, New York, location unknown

  

   1910, Nu à la cheminée (Nude). Exhibited at the 1910 Salon d’Automne. Published in Les Peintres Cubistes by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1913

  

   1910–11, Deux Nus (Two Nudes, Two Women), oil on canvas, 92 x 66 cm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. Exhibited at the first Cubist manifestation, Room 41 of the 1911 Salon des Indépendants, Paris

  

   Le goûter (Tea Time), 1911, 75.9 x 70.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Exhibited at the 1911 Salon d’Automne. André Salmon dubbed this painting “The Mona Lisa of Cubism”

  

   1912, Femme à l’Éventail (Woman with a Fan), oil on canvas, 90.7 x 64.2 cm. Exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, 1912, Paris, and De Moderne Kunstkring, 1912, Amsterdam. Published in Les Peintres Cubistes, by Guillaume Apollinaire, 1913. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

  

   1912–1913, L’Oiseau bleu, (The Blue Bird), oil on canvas, 230 x 196 cm, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

  

   Metzinger in about 1912. (Unknown photographer, possibly Pierre Choumoff)

  

   1913, La Femme à l’Éventail (Woman with a Fan), oil on canvas, 92.8 x 65.2 cm, Art Institute of Chicago, IL

  

   c.1913, Le Fumeur (Man with Pipe), oil on canvas, 129.7 x 96.68 cm, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Exhibited at the 1914 Salon des Indépendants, Paris

  

   1913, En Canot (Im Boot), oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm (57.5 in × 44.9 in), exhibited at Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague, 1914, acquired in 1916 by Georg Muche at the Galerie Der Sturm, confiscated by the Nazis circa 1936, displayed at the Degenerate Art show in Munich, and missing ever since.

  

   1914–15, Soldat jouant aux échecs (Soldier at a Game of Chess, Le Soldat à la partie d’échecs), oil on canvas, 81.3 x 61 cm, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

  

   April 1916, Femme au miroir (Femme à sa toilette, Lady at her Dressing Table), oil on canvas, 92.4 x 65.1 cm, private collection

  

   1911–1912, La Femme au Cheval, Woman with a horse, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark. Published in Apollinaire’s 1913 Les Peintres Cubistes, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants, and the Salon de la Section d’Or, 1912, Paris.

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     c.1905-06, Nu dans un paysage, oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm. 2nd Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler Sale of Sequestered Art, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 17–18 November 1921, reproduced n. 162

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     c.1906, Femme au Chapeau (Woman with a Hat), oil on canvas, 44.8 x 36.8 cm, Korban Art Foundation

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     1911, Nu (Nu debout), oil on carton, 52 x 35 cm. Reproduced in Du “Cubisme”, 1912

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     1911–12, Nature morte (Compotier et cruche décorée de cerfs), oil on canvas, 93.5 by 66.5 cm, published in Nya Konstgalleriet, Flamman, Stockholm, 1917

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     1911–12, Le Port (The Harbor). Exhibited at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants, Paris. Reproduced in Du “Cubisme”, by Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes, 1912, Paris, and Les Peintres Cubistes Guillaume Apollinaire, 1913. Dimensions and current location unknown

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     1911–12, Man with a Pipe (Portrait of an American Smoker), oil on canvas, 92.7 x 65.4 cm (36.5 x 25.75 in), Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin. Reproduced on the catalogue cover of Exhibition of Cubist and Futurist Pictures, Boggs & Buhl Department Store, Pittsburgh, July 1913

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     c.1912, Paysage (Landscape), location unknown. Reproduced in Du “Cubisme”, 1912

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     1912, At the Cycle-Race Track (Au Vélodrome), oil and sand on canvas, 130.4 x 97.1 cm (51.4 x 38.25 in.) The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

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     1912, Landscape (Marine, Composition Cubiste), oil on canvas, 51.4 x 68.6 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.   Published in Herwarth Walden, Einblick in Kunst: Expressionismus, Futurismus, Kubismus (1917), Der Sturm, 1912 – 1     1917

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     1912, Paysage (Landscape), oil on canvas, 59.2 x 73 cm, published in Der Sturm, 5 January 1921, Art Institute of Chicago

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     1913, Etude pour L’Oiseau bleu (Study for The Blue Bird), watercolor, graphite and ink on paper, 37 x 29.5 cm, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris

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     c.1915, L’infirmière (The Nurse), work on paper, dimensions and whereabouts unknown. Published in l’Elan, Number 9, 12 February 1916

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     1916, Fruit and a Jug on a Table, oil and sand on canvas, 115.9 x 81 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Published in Paul Erich Küppers, Der Kubismus; ein künstlerisches Formproblem unserer Zeit, 1920

    Mac Tag