Robert Henri

(1865-1929)

Chow Choy 32 x 26 in. (81.3 x 66 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Terry DeLapp Gallery, Los Angeles, circa 1966.
Private collection, California.
Art Market, New York, 1967.
Private collection, New York, 1968.
Spanierman Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1997.

Exhibited
Los Angeles, Exposition Park, Museum of History, Science and Art (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Paintings of Robert Henri, September 14-30, 1914, no. 6.
New York, Macbeth Gallery, Exhibition of Recent Work of Robert Henri, November 17-December 7, 1914, no. 9.
West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1915.
Cleveland, Gage Gallery, 1915.
Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of Paintings by Robert Henri of New York, August 28-September 26, 1915, n.p., no. 1.
Columbus, Ohio, 1915.
Indianapolis, John Herron Art Institute (now the Indianapolis Museum of Art), Paintings by Robert Henri, November 3-28, 1915, n.p., no. 101, illustrated.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Special Exhibition of Paintings by Mr. Robert Henri, December 1915, no. 1.
Toledo Museum of Art, Paintings by Robert Henri, January 1916.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1916.
Milwaukee Art Institute, Paintings by Robert Henri, March 1916.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1916.
Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Exhibition of Paintings by Robert Henri, May 1-June 1, 1916, n.p., no. 9.
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Catalogue of Foreign and American Artists, November 27-December 16, 1916, no. 17.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Hundred and Twelfth Annual Exhibition, February 4-March 25, 1917, no. 405.
(possibly) New York, Macbeth Gallery, 1917.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Thirty-Seventh Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, October 30-December 14, 1924, n.p., no. 92.
(possibly) Art Institute of Chicago, Henri Exhibition, 1924-1925, and elsewhere.
New York, Gerald Peters Gallery, Robert Henri: The Painted Spirit, October 27-December 10, 2005, pp. 21, 30-31, pl. 10, illustrated.
Laguna Art Museum, Robert Henri's California: Realism, Race, and Region, 1914-1925, February 22-May 31, 2015, p. 53, no. 12, illustrated, and elsewhere.

Literature
Art Notes, Macbeth Galleries Newsletter, no. 53, November 1914, frontispiece illustration.
A. Anderson, "Art and Artists: Henri's La Jolla Portraits," Los Angeles Sunday Times, September 27, 1914, section 3, p. 4.
Arts and Decoration 5, November 1914, back cover illustration.
"Recent Paintings by Robert Henri," New York Times, November 22, 1914, section 5, p. 11.
[R. Cortissoz], "Exhibition and Other Matters of Fine Art, Recent American Work: Robert Henri Among Indians and Romantic Types," New York Tribune, November 22, 1914, sec. 3, p. 3.
H. McBride, "What is Happening in the World of Art: Robert Henri's California Paintings," Sun (New York), November 22, 1914, sec. 3, p. 5.
"California Types Painted by Mr. Robert Henri," Town & Country, November 28, 1914, pp. 27, 38, illustrated.
Bulletin for the Art Institute of Chicago, October 1, 1915, vol. 9, p. 83.
Fine Arts Journal, October 1915, vol. 33, p. 436.
W.I. Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle, Ithaca, New York, 1969, p. 254, fig. 61, illustrated.
V.A. Leeds, "Robert Henri and the American Southwest: His Work and Influence," PhD dissertation, New York, 2000, pp. 90-91, 447, illustrated.

We are grateful to Valerie Ann Leeds, PhD, for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Painted during his first trip to the Western United States in 1914. Chow Choy demonstrates Robert Henri's unique ability to capture not only a sitter's likeness, but also the vitality and inherent uniqueness of their personality.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Robert Henri became one of the foremost proponents within American painting to focus on the unsympathetic realities of modern urban life, rather than the softness of Impressionist and Art Nouveau subjects. As the oldest of the unofficial group of painters, Henri was considered the leader of what would become the "Ashcan School," along with George Luks (1867-1933), John Sloan (1871-1951), and Everett Shinn (1876-1953). These four initially met while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under the tutelage of Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912). Anshutz was a dedicated advocate of painting in the realist tradition and utilizing the dark tonal palette of his mentor Thomas Eakins, and Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and he instructed his students to do the same. The group was influenced, at least in part, by the photography and journalism of Jacob Riis (1849-1914), which frequently depicted the squalid conditions of tenement housing and the difficulties faced by the poorest members of society. Portraying the often harsh and tumultuous daily lives of turn-of-the-century Americans earned Henri and his cohorts the moniker of the "Ashcan School," a dual-meaning reference to the gritty urban scenes they painted and a tongue in cheek reference to the groups derision towards so called "schools of art."

While most of the Ashcan School Painters devoted themselves to portraying the difficulties of urban life in the dance halls, bars, tenement buildings, and docks of New York City, Henri focused on depicting the humanity he found in his travels throughout the US and Europe through portraiture. Through his travels, Henri was exposed to a plethora of diversity and used these experiences to shape how he portrayed his models. Henri viewed his sitters as intrinsically unique individuals, and sought to portray them as such, rather than tropes of their racial or cultural identities. In his own words, "The people I like to paint are "my people," whoever they may be, wherever they may exist, the people whom dignity of life is manifest, that is who are in some way expressing themselves naturally along the lines Nature intended for them. My people may be old or young, rich or poor, I may speak their language or I may communicate to them only gestures. But whenever I find them . . . my interest is awakened and my impulse immediately is to tell about them through my own language – drawing and painting in color." (as quoted in W. I. Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle, New York, 1969, p. 252)

Amongst Henri's most interesting and compelling portrayals are those of children. Henri found children to possess a spirit of spontaneity and honesty; they also lacked the pretentiousness and vanity so often present in adults. Regarding Henri's portraits of youths, fellow artist John Sloan once noted: "If one has a love of children as human beings, and realizes the greatness that is in them, no better subjects for painting can be found. The majority of people patronize children, look down on them rather than up to them, think they are 'sweet,' when in reality it is children that have not yet been buried under the masses of little habits, conventions and details which burden most grown-ups." (Ibid., p. 207) In his own words, Henri once said to his mother: "I am not interested in making copies of pretty children. What I am after is the freshness and wonder of their spirit, the beauty that often lies back of an awkward or even homely exterior until it is searched out. I enjoy the search for it." (as quoted in V. Organ, "Robert Henri: His Life," unpublished manuscript, Estate of Robert Henri, LeClair Family Collection, p. 99)

Henri's extensive travels took him throughout Europe numerous times during the 1890s and 1900s, though he did not begin traveling to the western United States until the 1910s. Henri made his first trip west in June of 1914, settling in La Jolla, California, a seaside town known for its rugged coastlines. This location was ideal for Henri to scout a variety of diverse sitters for portraits, as there were communities of Black, Mexican, Chinese, and Native American people nearby, and just a few miles south in San Diego. The present work was the first portrait Henri executed of an Asian-American sitter, a young girl named Mary, though he titled the work Chow Choy.

Henri's portraits during this first trip to California use a much brighter palette, as is evident in Chow Choy, which is a marked contrast to the rich and dark palette influenced by the Old Masters of his earlier portraits. Henri is clearly being influenced by the Southern California atmosphere, demonstrated by the pale-yellow background evocative of the California sunlight, which he utilizes to instill a sense of light and airiness into the composition. Within Chow Choy, Henri is using color create strong vertical and diagonal lines, as realized in the use of white on the sitter's arms and collar, the dusty pinks of the fan and edging of the dress, and the sky blue of her dress. These color harmonies imbue the work with a sense of openness and tranquility in conjunction with the soft yellow backdrop, which accentuates the demeanor and costume of the young girl. In this portrait, the artist has captured a delicate sense of innocence and demureness. Henri noted in his record book (# I-159), that the sitter is wearing the traditional dress of women in Japan, a kimono, though in actuality, she is wearing a modified cheongsam, the customary attire of women in China.

Though he painted people of all colors and creeds throughout his career, Henri executed only 6 other portraits of people of Asian heritage, all of which during his 1914 trip to California, the majority of which are now held in public institutions, including: Tam Gan, illustrated below, (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York); Chinese Girl with Fan (Private Collection); Mukie (San Diego Museum of Art); Jim Lee, (Private Collection); Chinese Lady (Milwaukee Museum of Art); and Machu (Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky). The portraits painted by Henri during his trip to La Jolla have come to be recognized as amongst the most evocative and vivid works he ever produced, including the present work Chow Choy.