It is impossible to speak of Henner, and yet pass over in silence his
success as a portrait painter, in which capacity he was equal, if not
superior, to the painter of nymphs and Magdalens.
In his portrait work Henner was first of all the portrayer of women, as
indeed, throughout his life, he had been in all his paintings.
There was no dearth of models. They came to him in throngs, and his
studio in the Place Pigalle witnessed a procession of the most
magnificent beauties of France and the world at large. Henner, however,
was never a flattering portrait painter, nor even a complaisant one. He
had too much respect for himself and for his art to trade upon his
professional integrity; he was too fervent a worshipper of nature to
distort it, or even to paraphrase it. His portraits are literally
portraits, in the highest sense of the word; I mean that they are
faithful copies of the person represented, and that no trace of
adulation could be found in a single one of them. But he excelled in
extracting from the physiognomy of his model that one intimate note
which each one of us conceals within himself, and that is now and then
betrayed upon our features in a fugitive yet unmistakable gleam. It is
this hidden note, this inner flame, this latent nobility, this moral
beauty which Henner had the peculiar gift of divining and interpreting.
Is it at all surprising, with such advantages, that Henner's portraits
are of such superior workmanship that they are almost always
masterpieces? Unfortunately, it is impossible here to enter upon an
extensive study of Henner the portrait painter; we must content
ourselves with citing the most celebrated of his portraits of women:
Mme. Paul Dubois, Mme. Bonard, Mme. Sédille, a charming countenance,
seen full-face, the black shawl throwing her rich beauty into relief;
Mme. Jules Ferry, Mme. Scheurer-Kestner, Mme. Charles Hayem, Mme.
Koechlin-Schwartz, Mlle. Formigé, Mme. Pasteur and Mlle. Pasteur, the
magnificent portrait of Miss Eldin, whose regal blond beauty is framed
in a bewitching Gainsborough hat; Mlle. Marcille, Mlle. Mosenthal,
Mlle. Sédille, Mlle. Gentien, an admirable symphony of black tones, in
which all the accessories, the gloves and fan, are of sombre colour;
this portrait is one of Henner's best; Mme. Eumont, whose black
garments form a curious contrast to her powdered hair; then, three
masterpieces: the portraits of the three daughters of Mme. Porgès, and
also that of Mme. Porgès herself with her youngest child; the Comtesse
d'Ideville, whose red robe forms a warm and luminous contrast to the
sombre background of the picture; Her Imperial Highness, the Countess
of Eu, daughter of Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil; the Princesse de
Broglie, née Say, daughter of the millionaire refiner; Mme.
Fournier-Sarlevèze, a fascinating woman, who died prematurely; Mme.
Raffalowitz, Mme. Oulman, Mme. Henry Fouquier, and her charming
daughter, Mlle. Fouquier, Mme. Rodrigues, Mlle. Leroux, Mlle. de
Morell, Mme. Fougère-Dubourg, Mme. Kutner; Mme. Daniel Dollfus,
portrayed standing; the Marquise de Mosges; Mme. Hippolyte Adam; Mme.
de Rute, Mme. Jules Siegfried, Mme. Duplay, Mme. Fabre, Mme. Peltreau,
the Baroness Brincard; Mlle. Hoschedé; Mlle. Chanzy, Mlle. Fernande
Dubourg; Mme. Herzog, Mme. Silhal, Mme. Brossard, Mme. Loreau, Mme. de
Crépy, Mme. Raphael, Mme. Jules Walfrey, Mme. Charras, Mme. Marochetti,
Mme. Diémer, Mme. Carmian, Mme. Monthier, in black and with black
drapery over her shoulders, Mme. de Beausacq (the Comtesse Diane), a
beautiful portrait of which we give a reproduction; this portrait was
executed by Henner at the request of Sully-Prudhomme and bequeathed to
the Louvre; but it has not yet been transferred to that great national
museum; it is still in the Luxembourg, and is regarded as one of its
choicest treasures.
Furthermore, mention should be made of Mlle. Valentine Edmond About,
Mlle. Brincard, Mme. Jules Claretie, the Comtesse Kessler, one of the
master's most successful portraits and one that he obtained from a
single sitting; Mme. Shopey, a fascinating Creole from the island of
Bourbon, whose profile has an ideal beauty that inspired Henner to
produce a veritable masterpiece; he was no less successful in
portraying Mme. Noetzlin, another exquisite exotic beauty, whose
languid indolence and captivating charm he has rendered with infinite
vigour and grace.
But one of his most beautiful portraits is that of Mme. Karekehia, the
mother of Nubar Pacha, who, although quite advanced in age, is
represented in a charming pose that emphasizes her natural attractions.
Nowhere else perhaps did Henner rise to such a height, or obtain such a
degree of truth in his interpretation of a human physiognomy.
And how many other portraits there are, equally beautiful, equally
powerful, if only we might cite them all!
Painter of women though he was, Henner did not refuse as a settled
policy to paint men, but it was difficult to make up his mind to do so.
Not that he showed less ability in his portraiture of men. It was
simply that it cost him something to renounce, even temporarily, the
cult of feminine beauty, to which he had dedicated himself. He loved to
make rays of light play harmoniously over blond flesh, over silken
fabrics, over draperies; and the uniformity of masculine garments does
not lend itself to this sort of magic. None the less, he produced a few
portraits of men which are absolutely remarkable; portraits of personal
friends, for the most part, which he painted with a solicitude that
makes itself felt: such are the portraits of Jules Claretie, of Dr.
Leroy, of the painter Parrot, of the sculptor Paul Dubois, the poet
Sully-Prudhomme, of the publisher Georges Charpentier, of General
Chanzy. Henner also painted a little portrait of Pasteur, which was
never shown at the Salon, but is nevertheless one of the most keenly
alive and most perfect of his works.
It would also be only fitting to consider Henner's work from the
particular point of view of landscape painting which occupies so large
a place in his pictures; but the circumscribed space of the present
study does not permit of this.
Henner aged peacefully in the tranquillity of his studio and the
harmonious regularity of an existence consecrated to labour and to art.
In 1900, at the time of the Universal Exposition, he obtained one of
the four grand prizes bestowed by the judges upon the greatest artists.
In this life of Henner's, unmarked by any extraordinary event,
everything is as limpid and as clear as a woodland spring whose
transparent waters flow peacefully, slipping noiselessly under cover of
the moss. Until the end, Henner retained his modesty, his natural
simplicity, his aversion to notoriety; and when in 1905 he died, there
was no dissenting voice in the general praise of his character and his
talent.
Henner possessed the rare privilege, not of having created a type, but
of having left upon contemporary art the imprint of his powerful
personality. We are also in debt to him for a return to the dignity of
the great classic types, to a beauty of form achieved in accordance
with an original and rejuvenated conception. Like Puvis de Chavannes,
he has taught us to appreciate the majestic harmony of antique
composition, and also, like him, he has given us an example of a
richness of colour carried to the culminating point by the simplest of
means. Steeped in classicism beneath its brilliant exterior, grounded
on a mastery of line-work, underneath the gleaming colours, Henner's
art has broken down all opposition, silenced all criticism, and evoked
universal admiration because it unites these two masterly qualities
which form the basis of imperishable painting: conscientiousness and
genius.
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Transcriber's Note:
The plates and their captions have been moved to paragraph breaks.
Minor printer's errors have been corrected, but variant and irregular
spellings have been retained.