Henner

by François Crastre

We must not forget The Magdalen, which was the most widely discussed work exhibited at this Salon. The subject was one of which the artist was especially fond; he treated it a number of times, and it almost seemed as though he wanted to prove the variability of a brush that never repeated itself and of a talent that was continually renewed. This time the penitent of the Gospel story is crouching in the entrance to a cave, in an attitude of prayer. In the half shadow cast by the overhanging rock, the body of the Magdalen radiates brightness, while ripples of light shimmer through her golden tresses. This beautiful picture is to be seen to-day in the Petit Palais, in the room reserved for the works of Henner.

Each succeeding year now brought new masterpieces and new triumphs. Two paintings were shown in the Salon of 1880: Sleep and The Fountain. The first of these represents a young girl, almost a child, sunken in profound sleep. Around the face, in its golden frame of hair, the artist has diffused an aureole of peace, candour, and innocence which brings to mind some legendary saint. Rarely has the artist achieved such perfection of line and such beauty of expression. The painting was purchased by the Prince de Broglie.

In The Fountain we behold a woman, beautiful with the beauty of red gold, like all of Henner's women. She is resting her hand upon the margin of a well, and seems to be gazing at her own reflection in the water.

This same Salon also includes Andromeda in Chains, which belongs to-day to Mme. Raffalowitz.

From time to time Henner reverted to religious paintings, for which, after the fashion of the great masters of the past, he always retained a marked fondness. Thus it happened that he exhibited at the Salon of 1881 a St. Jerome, a subject all the more venturesome to paint because many of the most illustrious artists, such as Dürer, Tintoretto, and Veronese, had treated it before him. Yet Henner might well challenge comparison with these redoubtable predecessors, and this picture, now in the Luxembourg, is numbered among his best.

The Spring, which figured at the same Salon, inevitably challenges comparison with the same subject formerly treated by Ingres. Employing wholly different means, Henner achieved the same degree of perfection as that attained by the illustrious author of The Odalisque. In Ingres' picture of The Spring, the flesh of the young girl has the freshness of some delicate and fragile fruit; in that of Henner's, it has the velvety savour of a fruit that is fully ripe. Both paintings show the same masterly science of line-work, the same impeccable sureness of execution, and also the same profound sense of virginal chastity in the nude. Henner's Spring was purchased by an American for eleven thousand dollars (55,000 francs). This is one of the highest prices ever paid for the work of a living painter.

In 1882 came Bara, of which we give a [reproduction] in the present volume, and which is now to be seen in the Petit Palais. This was still another subject which had been previously treated, and by no less a master than David! Both painters were equally felicitous in rendering the charming youthfulness of the small hero who fell so gloriously for his country. A comparison of the two works is all the more pleasurable because one discovers that, however dissimilar they may be, they express the same appreciation of classic beauty and the same reverence for form.

In 1883 we have The Woman Reading, a dazzling poem in blond flesh that brings to mind Correggio's Magdalen Reading, now contained in the Munich collection. In contrast with the opulence of the above portrait, we have next a countenance of remarkable gentleness, ideal in its expression of purity, in the picture entitled The Nun. She is quite young and quite fair, and she is kneeling upon the pavement in prayer, while her pale girlish face emerges from the sombre frame of her black garb, like an immaculate lily overgrown with weeds. This time Henner had surpassed himself; he had interpreted with inimitable strokes the beauty of renunciation and the purity of an ecstatic life.

This Salon was one of the most glorious that the great artist ever knew.

Nevertheless, it was the very next year that he exhibited The Weeping Nymph, his magnificent nymph prostrate upon the ground, sobbing with her face in her hands and her whole body writhing with anguish. After this came Fabiola, that superb, virgin profile crowned with a red cap, which the engraver's art has spread throughout the world in the form of millions of reprints, until its renown is universal.