Robert Henri

Janet J. Le Clair

In this book are the essential beliefs and theories of a great teacher and American artist, Robert Henri. While it embodies the entire system of his teaching, with much technical advice and critical comment for the student, it also contains inspiration for those to whom the happiness to be found through all the arts is important.No other American painter attracted such a large, intensely personal group of followers as Henri, whose death in 1929 brought to an end a life that has been completely devoted to art. He was an inspired artist and teacher who believed that everyone is vitally concerned in the happiness and wisdom to be found through the arts. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors. Among them are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wichita Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery.

The Art Spirit

His Life and Works, with Forty Reproductions

2019 Reprint of 1923 Edition. From 1915 to 1927, Henri was a popular and influential teacher at the Art Students League of New York. He provided for each student not a style so much as an attitude, an approach to art. Henri's philosophical and practical musings were collected by former pupil Margery Ryerson and published as The Art Spirit (1923), a book that remained in print for several decades. Henri's other students include George Bellows, Arnold Franz Brasz, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Henry Ives Cobb, Jr., Lillian Cotton, John Sloan, Minerva Teichert and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Filled with valuable technical advice as well as wisdom about the place of art and the artist in American society, this classic work continues to be a guide for artists concerned with the process of artistic creation.

Bennard B. Perlman

Delaware Art Museum

Robert Henri, Painter

Margery Ryerson

Written 100 years ago, The Art Spirit by Robert Henri is most influential book for artists, and especially American artists. It still remains one of the best selling books on art and creativity, and it attracts new readers with every generation. Henri with the assistance of Margery Ryerson prepared this book from four decades of his lecture notes and hundreds of letters to students and friends. The Art Spirit deserves to be in every artist's library.Although Henri offers practical advice on painting, the book is not just about how to do art, but how to become an artist. For Henri, there was no greater human ambition than to be an artist. Although Henri's own life was not without challenges, especially financial ones, he does not dwell on his personal adversities. The book is a glorification of the artist's life, and how mundane difficulties pale to the joys of the artistic life. The Art Spirit provides insights into the mind of one of America's most influential artists and teachers, and the reader-artist comes away with an uplifting sense in what it means to be a part of the great "Brotherhood" of art. One of the problems of the original edition was that Henri was a frequent name-dropper. In this new edition, names and terms are annotated along with illustrations, making the read more informative and enjoyable. It is the best of The Art Spirit reprints.

Annotated with Illustrations

Erika Doss

Brigham Young University. Museum of Art

Sarah Burns

Marian Wardle

Seldom recognized, yet contributing significantly to the structure of early American modernism is a group of women who were once the art students of the popular and perhaps most influential American art teacher of the twentieth century, Robert Henri (1865-1929). Henri encouraged an art that was expressive of personal emotions and experience and that was grounded in life. He preached equality among different media and approaches to art. Giving heed to his teachings, his women students engaged in a wide variety of artistic production. Collectively, the stunning variety and power of their work in painting, sculpture, printmaking, textiles, decorative arts, and furniture broadens our understanding of American modernism and illuminates the role of women artists in shaping it. Yet, these women have remained largely unstudied, and virtually unknown, even among art historians. The seven new essays included in this volume move beyond the famed Ashcan School-the small group of Henri's male students who worked in a narrow range of urban realist subjects-to recover the lesser known work of his women students. The contributors, who include well-known scholars of art history, American studies, and cultural studies demonstrate how these women participated in the "modernizing" of women's roles during this era; how gender controlled their art, productivity, sales, and reception; how their many styles, media, and subjects enrich our understanding of modern American art; and how the work of modern women artists relates to women's involvement in other areas of modern American society and culture, including labor and social reform, patronage, literature, dance, and music. Lavishly illustrated and complemented by short biographies of more than 400 of Henri's students, this delightful collection adds a long-ignored but deserving dimension to an expanded story of American modernism and to women's contributions to the arts.

Robert Henri

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