Robert Henri 1865 - 1929

(Mrs. W.J.R. Alexander, Cincinnati, Ohio)
Mrs. Ella Lunkenheimer Schaefer, by 1926 (acquired from the above)
Mary Eleanor Schaefer (her daughter), Cincinnati, Ohio
Louis Schaefer Wilshire (her sister), Cincinnati, Ohio
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1971

Robert Henri first visited Ireland in the summer of 1913, propelled there by a constellation of influences. Most important, Henri's wife Marjorie was a Dublin native who immigrated to America at the age of thirteen. When the Henris sailed from New York for Ireland in 1913, Henri left behind the art world infighting and the ongoing aftershock that followed the International Exhibition of Modern Art, the Armory Show.  Looking around Ireland for a spot in which to settle, Henri happened on Achill Island, in the far west off the coast of County Mayo. The couple rented Corrymore House, built by Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, the land agent whose actions roused the form of popular resistance that still bears his name. Henri painted a series of Achill landscapes but concentrated, as he had done for years, on portraits of the local people. Two years later, in 1915, Henri explained his commitment to portraiture in the pages of The Craftsman:

The people I like to paint are 'my people,' whoever they may be, wherever they may exist, the people through whom dignity of life is manifest, that is, who are in some way expressing themselves naturally along the lines nature intended for them. . . . (as quoted in Henri, The Art Spirit, 1923, p. 143)

Despite the success of his Irish summer, Henri did not return to Ireland until 1924, kept away by World War I and straitened finances. A 1923 legacy from Henri's mother provided the funds for an extended European tour. The trip also coincided with the publication of The Art Spirit, a compendium of Henri's teaching advice that continues to instruct art students to the present day.

When Henri returned to Achill Island in the spring of 1924, he discovered that Corrymore was available for sale. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: "Buying was of course out of the question, we being near the end of our string – so we bought it" (as quoted in William Inness Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle, New York 1988, p. 207).  The house remained their summer home for the rest of Henri's life as the people of Achill Island provided rich subject matter for Henri's brush.

Wherever he went, Henri, who was childless himself, painted children, finding in them the spirit, spontaneity and honesty he so valued. In The Art Spirit Henri urged, "Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior . . . for you are not" (Ibid, p. 271). And further,

Children are greater than the grown man. All grown men have more experience, but only a very few retain the greatness that was theirs before the system of compromises began in their lives (Ibid, pp. 237-8).   

In 1932, Mary L. Alexander (1875-1963), a painter and sculptor and long-time art columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer, wrote an appreciation and personal reminiscence on the occasion of a memorial exhibition devoted to Henri at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Annie Beg was one of the paintings in the exhibition that she singled out for special notice. 

There is little 'Annie Beg' (Begg, in reality, means little), a wild little creature who finally after repeated attempts was coaxed into posing. She sat for this portrait. So wild and shy was she that Mr. Henri felt that any quick move on his part would send her scurrying like a frightened deer. (Cincinnati Enquirer, February 14, 1932).

Alexander had good reason to write about Annie Beg.  Henri was a careful record keeper and his entry for Annie Beg reveals that he sent the picture to Mrs. W.J.R. Alexander of Cincinnati who sold it by February 1926 to Mrs. Ella Lunkenheimer Schaefer also of Cincinnati. Mrs. Alexander, whom Henri knew, was clearly acting as Henri's agent here. Because the artist never revealed the details of his early years during his lifetime, no one but Henri and his family could have appreciated at the time the satisfaction in placing a picture in Cincinnati. It was his home town, where he was born and where he was educated for his first thirteen years. 

Henri's notes for the painting are quite specific and serve as definitive documentation for the work. In addition to recording the circumstances of its sale, Henri identifies his model as Mary Ann Cafferty (confusing her actual surname of Cafferky with its more common variant).  He includes a rough sketch of the painting and indicates his palette choices - "blue at neck with . . . pin. White waist Dark shawl Dark Brown eyes and hair."

Over the course of four summers Henri painted many Achill Island children. The children of the Cafferkey family were among his favorite models. In addition to Annie Beg, Henri painted Mary Ann Cafferky at least twice in 1926 in The Pink Pinafore (Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska) and Mary Ann with Her Basket (Currier Gallery of Art, New Hampshire) and again in 1928, Mary Ann Cafferty (Private Collection).