Robert Henri, 'Market at Concarneau', 1899

Robert Henri was born in Ohio to French parents. The family was forced to flee from their home to Denver after his father, John Jackson Cozad, shot a man over a land dispute, and Robert changed his second name to Henri, which he pronounced ‘Hen Rye’.

Throughout his career as an artist, teacher and writer, Henri searched for ways in which American art could develop its own stylistic approach that was independent of European ideas and methods. In 1888 he made his first trip to Europe and enrolled in the Académie Julian in Paris, where he studied under the academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. During this period, he discovered the work of the Impressionists. He also started to paint in Concarneau in the west of Brittany. He returned to the USA in 1891 but for many years divided his time between France and America. His exposure to European art, in particular to avant-garde art movements, was vital to the development of his ideas of a unique American visual language.

This work is on a wooden board that Henri painted on both sides. The board is chamfered on both edges, suggesting that it may be from a small box.

His use of thick layers of paint, or impasto, and the fact that both landscapes were painted outside directly in front of the scenes that he saw, shows the influence of Impressionism and was a reaction against the highly finished style he would have learnt from Bouguereau. It was this seeming lack of technical workmanship that allowed Henri to be more expressive and gestural in his style. The central place of emotions rather than the intellect in art became a deeply held belief for Henri.

Concarneau is not far from Pont Aven, which was home to an artists’ colony that Henri visited. A group of artists from Philadelphia had arrived in the town in 1866. By the time Henri visited, Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Paul Sérusier, among others, were living there. Inspired by the surrounding Breton landscape, they were developing a style that would become known as Synthetism. However, Henri was not convinced by this new approach and continued to paint in a style that owed a great deal to the Impressionists.