Musée No:583.159
Regular price £25.00Mary Fanton Roberts
Artist: Robert Henri
Date : 1917
Robert Henri (1865 –1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against American academic art, as reflected by the conservative National Academy of Design. Together with a small team of enthusiastic followers, he pioneered the Ashcan School of American realism, depicting urban life in an uncompromisingly brutalist style. By the time of the Armory Show, America's first large-scale introduction to European Modernism (1913), Henri was mindful that his own representational technique was being made to look dated by new movements such as Cubism, though he was still ready to champion avant-garde painters such as Henri Matisse and Max Weber. Henri taught his students to "work quickly. Don’t stop for anything but the essential .... It’s the spirit of the thing that counts" (Henri diary, August 25, 1926, entry).
The sitter : Mary Fanton Roberts (1864–1956) was an American journalist and writer. She was best known as an editor of women's and decorating magazines. She was very much involved in the artistic, theatrical, and literary circles in New York City, and she became friends with many American avant-garde artists and was responsible for helping to launch many artists' careers. During WWI, she and Paris Singer helped establish a hospital for soldiers with "shell shock" to convalesce in Palm Beach.
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