Robert Henri 1865 - 1929

Chapellier Galleries, New York
Private Collection, Minnesota
(Ronnie Meyerson, Inc., Bayville, New York)
Acquired by the present owners from the above, 1991

Painted in late September or early October of 1925 on Achill Island, Corrymore, Ireland. The subject is probably Thomas MacNamara.

Robert Henri first visited the western coast of Ireland in 1913, renting the Corrymore house, located on Achill Island outside the village of Dooagh. Inspired and invigorated by the serene landscape and guileless nature of the local people, Henri developed a fresh painting style which would characterize his works from this point on. Subsequent summers were spent in Santa Fe, where he was similarly captivated by the unspoiled charm of the local inhabitants, but by 1924 the Henris were eager to return to Ireland.  Finding Corrymore for sale, they purchased the house for £200, and spent their remaining summers there until Henri's death in 1928.

Henri had first turned his artistic focus to portraiture as early as 1900 (concurrent to his joining William Merritt Chase on the faculty of the New York School of Art), but these portraits were not nearly as commercially successful as his earlier Parisian street scenes. Nevertheless, he remained committed to developing a distinct style of realism which most effectively communicated the individual character of his sitters. The children Henri encountered in the local villages in Ireland and New Mexico possessed  an unconventional aesthetic beauty  that proved to be irresistible to an artist striving to capture the purest essence of his sitters and their unaffected dispositions. MacNamara, painted by Henri in Ireland in 1925, epitomizes both the delight the artist derived from his subject, as well as the unique and vibrant style he had developed for his portraits.  An early admirer of the seventeenth century masters, Henri had, by this point in his career, assimilated the energetic brushwork of Frans Hals and dramatic use of light and dark shadow of Rembrandt into his own singular technique.  Selectively incorporating and assimilating these devices, Henri was able to capture the subtle and distinctive personalities of his sitters. MacNamara's eyes look past the viewer with a subdued calm, while his hands rest quietly in his lap. The portrait gracefully articulates the charm Henri clearly perceived in this beguiling Irish boy.