The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (220 page)

 
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(1865–1929).
American painter, teacher, and writer, a major figure in combating conservative attitudes in American art in the early 20th cent. From 1886 to 1888 he trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, under Thomas Anshutz (1851–1912), who passed on the tradition of Thomas
Eakins
, an artist Henri came to admire deeply. In 1888–91 he lived in Paris, studying mainly at the
Académie
Julian. After returning to Philadelphia he became the leader of a circle of young artists—
Glackens
,
Luks
,
Shinn
,
Sloan
—that later became the nucleus of the
Eight
and the
Ash-can School
. In 1895–7 and 1898–1900 he again lived in Paris, then in 1900 settled in New York. There he became an outstanding teacher, first at the New York School of Art, 1902–9, then at his own school, 1909–12, at the Modern School of the Ferrer Center (a radical educational establishment), 1911–18, and finally at the
Art Students League
, 1915–28. The essence of his teaching was that art should grow from life, not from theories. He said that he wanted his own paintings to be ‘as clear and as simple and sincere as is humanly possible’, and he was a powerful force in turning young American painters away from academism to look at the rich subject-matter provided by modern urban life, ‘regarded by many of his contemporaries as the most influential single force affecting the development of American art in the generation preceding the
Armory Show
of 1913’ (William Innes Homer,
Robert Henri and His Circle
, 1969). Henri was open-minded about the new developments seen at the Armory Show but he was not interested in experiment for experiment's sake and his own painting was little affected by it. His early work had been
Impressionist
, but in the 1890s he adopted a darker palette, with rapid slashing brushwork geared to creating a sense of vitality and immediacy. From 1909 his work became more colourful again. Apart from scenes of urban life, he painted many portraits, and also landscapes and seascapes (which have been rather neglected). He made frequent visits to Europe and found inspiration there for figure studies of picturesque characters—Irish peasants, gypsies, and so on. His paintings are dashing but rather superfical and they are generally regarded as much less important than his teaching and crusading. Henri wrote numerous articles on art and in 1923 published
The Art Spirit
, a collection of his letters, lectures, and aphorisms, in which art is seen as an expression of love for life.

 
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(1903–75).
English sculptor, one of the most important figures in the development of abstract art in Britain. She trained at Leeds School of Art, where she became a friend of Henry
Moore
, and at the
Royal College of Art
. Her early sculptures were quasi-naturalistic and had much in common with Moore's work (
Doves
, Manchester City Art Gal., 1927), but she already showed a tendency to submerge detail in simple forms, and by the early 1930s her work was entirely abstract. She worked both in wood and stone, and she described an important aspect of her early career as being ‘the excitement of discovering the nature of carving’—this at a time when there was a general antagonism to ‘direct carving’. In this, too, she was united with Moore, but her work, unlike his, is not representational in origin but conceived as abstract forms. Yet she consistently professed a
Romantic
attitude of emotional affinity with nature, speaking of carving both as a ‘biological necessity’ and as an ‘extension of the telluric forces which mould the landscape’. From 1925 to 1931 Hepworth was married to the sculptor John Skeaping (1901–80). In 1931 she met Ben
Nicholson
, who became her second husband a year later, and through him she became aware of contemporary European developments. They joined
Abstraction-Création
in 1933, and
Unit One
in the same year. During the 1930s Hepworth, Nicholson, and Moore worked in close harmony and became recognized as the nucleus of the abstract movement in England. In 1939 Hepworth moved to St Ives in Cornwall with Nicholson and lived there for the rest of her life (see
ST IVES SCHOOL
). During the late 1930s and 1940s she began to concentrate on the counterplay between mass and space in sculpture. In 1931 in
Pierced Form
(destroyed in the war) she first introduced into England the use of the ‘hole’, and she now developed this with great subtlety, making play with the relationship between the outside and inside of a figure, the two surfaces sometimes being linked with threaded string, as in
Pelagos
(Tate, London, 1946).
Pelagos
also shows her sensitive use of painted surface to contrast with the natural grain of the wood. In all her work she displayed a deep understanding of the quality of her materials and superb standards of craftsmanship. By the 1950s she was one of the most internationally famous of sculptors and she received many honours and prestigious public commissions, among them the memorial to Dag Hammerskjold—
Single Form
—at the United Nations in New York (1963). She now worked more in bronze, especially for large pieces, but she always retained a special feeling for direct carving. Hepworth died tragically in a fire at her studio in St Ives. The studio is now a museum dedicated to her work.

 
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(1849–1914).
Bavarian-born English painter. He came to England with his father, a wood-carver, in 1857 and was largely self-taught as a painter. He established his reputation with
The Last Muster—Sunday at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea
(Lady Lever Art Gal., Port Sunlight, 1875), a work appealing to the public taste for patriotic sentiment, and then became a successful and prolific portrait painter. His best-known works today, however, are his scenes of social concern, which were then still something of a novelty in English art (
On Strike
, Royal Academy, London, 1891). Herkomer was a versatile artist and a man of many parts. He founded and directed a school of art at Bushey, Hertfordshire, 1883–1904, was
Slade
Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, 1885–94, and published several books. In addition to paintings, his varied artistic output included set designs for the theatre and cinema, and he also acted and composed music.

 
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