Art | January 08, 2024

Robert Henri: Art for Life’s Sake 

In biographies of American artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Robert Henri’s name appears often. While he was known as cofounder of the Ashcan School of urban realism and an exceptional painter of portraits, he was even more acclaimed as America’s finest art teacher. George Bellows, Edward Hopper, John Sloan, and Rockwell Kent, among others, were devoted pupils. To critics they recalled that he guided not only their art but also their lives by encouraging them to live richly in the world.  

Henri’s teaching career began in 1891 at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, where he taught drawing and composition classes. He loved teaching from the start. His approach was to take student work seriously and make students believe that art was a necessary and fundamental part of their lives. He taught that the only law of artistic composition was to tell a story; beyond that there were no set rules.