Henner

by François Crastre

The picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, and, curiously enough, it by no means met with the success that it deserved. The critics, accustomed to a very different type of painting, did not understand this new and unfamiliar method. Théophile Gautier was the only one who proclaimed its merit. It is only fair to add that his opinion was easily worth all the others. "It is not alone," he wrote, "the style and beauty of line that form the distinction of this beautiful Jewess, but also and more especially the fine instinct for colour. This is no statue that is bathing here, it is a very genuine woman."

At this same Salon, Henner exhibited two portraits of superior workmanship: that of Schnets, director of the École de Rome, and that of M. Joyau, architect of the same school.

THE WORKS OF HENNER

In 1865, Henner returned to Paris and installed himself in the house in the Place Pigalle which he occupied during the rest of his life. This house is full of memories. It has sheltered, either successively or at the same time, many illustrious painters: Jules and Victor Dupré, Théodore Rousseau, Puvis de Chavannes, Boldini, etc. Henner occupied the lower floor to begin with, but later, after the death of Pils, who had been living on the second floor, he took the latter's studio, because the light was better.

And, from the day of his return to Paris, Henner entered upon a life of unremitting toil and fecundity that never ceased to cause astonishment. Few painters have left behind them such a volume of productions; his genre pictures, his landscapes peopled with nymphs are innumerable; as to his portraits, women's portraits especially, it would require far more ample limits than those of the present study merely to give a list of them. And what evokes genuine admiration is the fact that it is impossible, in the midst of this extraordinary multiplicity of widely varied works, to find a single one that is not evidently equal to his best. And this is because Henner, notwithstanding his facility, bestowed an infinite conscientiousness upon even the least important of his paintings. He regarded it as dishonesty to produce merely for the sake of producing, or, to sum it up in a word, to do fake work.

Indefatigable workman that he was, Henner allowed himself few diversions; his life was as strictly ordered as that of a monk. Always an early riser, he devoted his mornings to his landscapes and genre paintings, and his afternoons to his portraits. From four until seven he was in the habit of receiving a few friends or would bury himself in a book, for he was a great reader. It was an exceptional thing for him to dine away from home, and when he went out it was always for the purpose of visiting the Louvre or some exhibit of paintings. As a matter of fact, he was never happy away from his studio, that celebrated studio which he had fitted up with so much taste and magnificence. It was there, in that artistic and sumptuous setting, that he executed those innumerable works, whose magnificent flowering we are about to follow, year by year. It will be impossible for us to cite them all; we must content ourselves with calling attention only to the more remarkable.

In 1865, Henner exhibited his Biblis metamorphosed into a Spring, one of his most beautiful paintings. In the midst of a sombre landscape, the dazzling nudity of the nymph forms a luminous spot, but the contrasting tones harmonize in a sort of fine and golden atmosphere, blending into the profound green of the foliage, the porcelain blue of the sky, and the resplendent whiteness of the flesh. And what simplicity of means he has used to produce this result! Henner had profited from the lessons of the great masters; and he was never to forget them.

The following year came his Study of a Young Girl. This time it was no longer under leafy canopies that the painter chose to place his model, but in the presence of the immensity of the blue sea. The success of this painting was very marked and it earned the artist a medal of the first class. But the painter himself was as severe towards his own work as the critics had been flattering; he was not satisfied with it, and when the canvas was once again back in his studio, he destroyed it. What a pity that such a work should have been lost, but also what a fine example, and what a rare one, of professional conscientiousness and integrity!

The work exhibited the following year suffered the same fate. In one of those crises of discontent which Henner, always severe towards himself, frequently passed through, he once again ripped up his own work, the charming painting known as The Toilet, which nevertheless had received nothing but praise while at the Salon.

The public, by which I mean the enlightened public, had now come to appreciate the talent of the young artist. His reputation was established, and orders began to come in. Not that he had yet acquired that world-wide celebrity which was destined to come later, but people were beginning to understand the originality of his art, which at first had provoked so much discussion.