Jean-Jacques Henner was born, on the 15th of March, 1829, in the
village of Bernwiller, not far from Belfort, on the confines of Alsace.
This origin explains the strongly personal character of his talent.
Offspring as he was of a land that once was German,--and that, alas,
has once again become so, after having been impregnated for several
centuries with the refinement and the good taste of France,--Henner
unites in himself the dominant qualities of both races: from Germany he
derives his laborious energy, his tenacity, his spirit of research, his
poetic dreaminess; to the French imprint he owes the delicacy, the good
taste, the grace, the subtlety, the careful weighing of effects, that
distinguish all his work.
Jean-Jacques Henner was the youngest child of a numerous family. His
parents were modest tillers of the soil, who nevertheless had won the
general esteem of the neighbourhood. Of little education, but honest
and industrious, Henner's father was rewarded for his integrity and
blameless life by being appointed to the office of village tax
collector. With as little learning as her husband, his mother possessed
a dreamy spirit and a very keen intelligence. It was she who first
discerned in the thoughtful and rather backward boy the germs of his
future talent; it was also she who encouraged and sustained him with
her wise affection when the first promise of his future talent was
revealed.
His vocation manifested itself at an early age. Little Jean-Jacques
could barely read when he had already begun to adorn the walls with
charcoal figures that "fairly stood on their feet," and proved that the
child possessed a precocious power of observation. In some of these
sketches it was easy to recognize certain frequent visitors to the
house, friends and neighbours; and the good-hearted villagers used to
come and admire these attempts. Quite surprised at these proclivities,
his father, instead of interfering with the boy's natural bent, did his
best to encourage it. Being unable to provide him with a
drawing-master,--and for that matter the child was still too young,--he
supplied him with models, in the shape of the familiar Epinal coloured
prints which little Jean-Jacques tried to reproduce to the best of his
ability. It certainly was not through the aid of these naïve and
rudimentary essays in colour work that Henner learned the art of
drawing, but they at least served to strengthen his desire to learn,
and gave him facility in handling his pencil.
The father of little Jean-Jacques served him as best he could; it was
he who laid the corner-stone of his son's future glory. In that humble
household, where each member had his appointed task, from the father
down to the frailest child, Jean-Jacques was the only one who took no
part in the labour of the fields; he was exempted in order to continue
his education and develop his taste for drawing.
Even the neighbours, astonished at his precocity, aided him as best
they could. One brought paper, another an old picture, another some
prints found in an out-of-the-way corner of the house, still another a
supply of paints. Thus equipped, the child worked with unflagging zeal,
undertook to learn the use of colours, and in order to repay his
benefactors, he made portraits of them, which are still preserved in
those Alsatian households and which already reveal, in more than one of
those likenesses that he always caught so well, the first germs of
those qualities of a great portrait painter, such as he was one day
destined to become.
"You will be a great artist," his father used to say, as he kissed him;
for the good man foresaw, almost by divination, the glorious destiny
that awaited his son. And addressing his other sons, all of them older
than little Jean-Jacques, and all of them destined to pass their days
in the hard labour of tilling the soil, he told them:
"When I am no longer here, I commend your brother to you. Aid him and
sustain him. Help him to achieve his career. You will be repaid for it;
this I promise you, in the name of the good God."
The brothers carried out piously and to the letter these commands of
their father; while Henner, for his part, promised himself to fulfil
his share of the bargain. He never forgot what he owed to his older
brothers; and he paid them back a hundredfold for all the benefits that
he had received.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF MLLE. L.
(Luxembourg Museum)
This is one of the most curious portraits painted by the artist inasmuch
as it attains a maximum of perfection in spite of a combination
of the most unfavourable possible means. Notwithstanding
the sombre garments that barely stand out against the dull blue
background, the face reveals an extraordinary intensity of life.]
At the age of seven, young Henner was required to go to church every
day for the purpose of learning his catechism. In the chapel where the
good curé of Bernwiller expounded the doctrine, there happened to be a
picture representing St. Sebastian. This picture attracted the
attention of the child irresistibly and was the cause of many moments
of inattention which brought upon him the paternal rebukes of the
priest. It was wasted severity. Little Jean-Jacques had eyes for
nothing else than the saint, whose widely gaping shirt revealed the
muscular throat and hairy chest; and he continued to stare at their
robust anatomy which so strongly resembled that of the peasants whom he
saw all about him in the village.
By a singular coincidence, this painting in by-gone days once reposed
for quite a long time in the home of his grandfather, where Henner
himself was born. An architect named Kléber, and destined to become
later a famous general, was occupied in building the parish house in
one of the neighbouring villages to Bernwiller. Coming by chance to
Bernwiller, he saw the painting of St. Sebastian, which he found had
been greatly impaired by age. He took steps to obtain its restoration
and, while waiting for the appointed artist to arrive from Strassburg,
he had it transferred to the house of Henner's grandfather. It was
there that the artist from Strassburg repaired the painting, and it
would almost seem as though there were some sort of obscure connection
between this fact and the powerful impression which the picture
produced upon the mind of little Jean-Jacques, and as though it were a
sort of secret bond between the glory of the great warrior and that of
the great painter.
A little later, young Henner was sent to attend school at Altkirch. Not
however in the capacity of a boarding pupil, for the family did not
have the means. Every day he had to cover on foot the two hours'
journey, in order to reach school, and the same to return. But the
child possessed the sacred fire: the kilometres seemed to him no more
than a pleasant walk.
As good luck would have it, the school at Altkirch possessed a
drawing-master, named Goutzwiller, an artist of real talent. He quickly
divined the possibilities of his new pupil, encouraged him, grounded
him, and became a true friend and, in a certain sense, a second father
to him.
After three years of study at this school, Henner left Altkirch, in
accordance with M. Goutzwiller's advice, in order to go to Strassburg,
where he entered the studio of the artist, Guérin. Here it was that he
exchanged the pencil for the brush. From his first attempts he
manifested a pronounced taste for oppositions of shadow and light, the
latter acquiring greater vigour by force of contrast. Henner's first
attempt at Strassburg was a copy of Heim's _Shepherd_, the original of
which was burned in 1870, at the time of the fire resulting from the
bombardment. But the copy remains, and bears witness to the painter's
early love for sombre backgrounds, shot through with shimmerings of
light.
During his vacations, which were passed at Bernwiller, Henner paid
numerous visits to Basle and to Colmar, where he went for the purpose
of studying the old German masters, Holbein, Schongauer, and Dürer.
Holbein especially delighted and inspired him: he loved his honest,
firm, frank line-work, no less than he appreciated the spirit of poetry
with which the early master imbued all his models. What a schooling for
a painter really enamoured of his art! In this ardent study of Holbein,
Henner confirmed the opinion, that had already taken shape in his mind,
that there is no good painting where there is not good drawing, and
that no one has the right to claim to be a painter if he cannot lay his
colours upon a solidly built foundation. The craftsman must always
precede the artist.
In the case of Henner, at this time, the craftsmanship was perfect;
nothing remained but to open a career for the artist. The young painter
had faith, courage, and ambition; he dreamed of continuing his studies,
of perfecting himself, of having other teachers. But these teachers
were precisely what Strassburg could not furnish; and Paris, the great
city, the centre of learning and of art, Paris was not far distant.
What joy, if he could only go there! At this juncture, Guérin died.
Having lost his master, Henner had nothing else to detain him in
Strassburg. Accordingly, he put his trust in Providence, and, with his
heart pulsing with hope, started on his way to the capital.