Plate
I. The Little Girl with the Blue Ribbon Frontispiece
Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts
II. The Reclining Nymph 14
Luxembourg Museum
III. Portrait of Mlle. L 24
Luxembourg Museum
IV. The Little Writer 34
Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts
V. Bara 40
Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts
VI. The Comtesse Diana 50
Luxembourg Museum
VII. The Naiad 60
Luxembourg Museum
VIII. The Magdalen with the Crucifix 70
Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts
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[Illustration: Line drawing of Henner]
There is no one who has not chanced, sooner or later, to pass the
window of some picture dealer and find himself irresistibly attracted
by a canvas forming a patch of fluid gold, a luminous vapour bathing
the white body of a woman, white with that rich, warm whiteness that
reveals, through the transparency of the skin, the inner flame, the
bounding blood, the pulsing life. Such a picture was a Henner. And when
you have come into contact, if only for once, with a work by this
incomparable artist, the effect is lasting; you recognize any and all
of his works at the first glance, just as you recognize a friend in the
street, even before he is near enough for you to distinguish his
features. So personal is Henner's manner, and so original his product,
that it is impossible to confound him with any other painter, just as
no other painter has ever been able or even attempted to imitate a type
of which he alone possessed the magic secret. Although the tomb has
barely closed above him, Henner has already entered upon his heritage
of glory. Or should we not rather say that he had entered upon it
during life, and that the unanimity of admiration which always followed
him was in the nature of a definitive judgment, which posterity has
nothing left to do but ratify? Among the most illustrious of our modern
painters, Henner is the one who possesses to the highest degree the art
of imprisoning light, of playing with it, of making it vibrate, of
using it to illumine the most profound woodland shades, or to set it
palpitating over feminine flesh. We must not seek within our own times
for any other with whom to compare him; for this we must look backward,
far backward, to the period of that glorious Venetian school of which
he seems to be a direct product. From Giorgione he derives his warm and
living flesh tints; it would seem that Titian had bequeathed to him his
profound and powerful mastery of colour; and if Correggio could see the
Nymphs and Bathing Women of Henner, he would certainly recognize in
them that same velvety delicacy and vaporous lightness with which he
himself was wont to envelop his female forms.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--RECLINING NYMPH
(Luxembourg Museum)
In accordance with Henner's favourite formula, the dazzling whiteness
of the nymph's body acquires an astonishing relief through
contrast with the sombre verdure, yet even the very shadows are
penetrated by a warm and vibrant light.]
For Henner was, above all else, a painter of women. "It was in the
female form that he sought and found perfect Beauty, complete,
indisputable, and undisputed, a victorious, compelling Beauty that
silences all criticism, all indecision by its multifold splendour, the
infinite variety of its complex forms, a Beauty embodied in contrast,
harmony, charm, freshness, and grace, but with no element of the merely
pretty or fantastic." Henner's women are without affectation, or
morbidness, or coquetry, or pretence. They are tall, strong, supple,
stately, superb, like the antique type itself. Their beauty is without
a flaw. Their flesh is steeped in light, their hair a tissue of living
radiance. Such is the clue to their irresistible seductiveness.
It has been said of Henner that he was the painter of blondes. He was
more especially the painter of the red-blonde type, for the reason that
light, falling upon the ruddy glint of their tresses, awakens
flame-like reflections and emphasizes the satiny grain of their skin.
This tawny, golden sheen is the most alive, the most vibrant, yet the
most unobtrusive of all, and consequently the most harmonious and the
most beautiful. But Henner also painted brunettes with an incomparable
mastery; to be convinced of this, one needs only to refer to any of the
innumerable portraits of dark-haired women that have come from his
brush, notably those of Mme. Noetzlin, of Mme. Duchesne-Fournes, of the
Comtesse de Jacquemont, and that of Mme. Karakehia which produced such
a marked sensation in the Salon of 1876.
While adhering to his own strongly personal manner, Henner nevertheless
experimented in the most diverse types of painting, as we shall see in
the course of the present study, and he was excellent in all of them,
because he brought to them all those masterly qualities which make the
greatness of a painter: impeccable line-work, a powerful command of
colour, and a perfect knowledge of his art acquired through the
constant pursuit of beauty and of truth.