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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF ARTHUR G. ALTSCHUL

HUGHIE THE POET

measurements
24 by 20 in.

alternate measurements
(60.9 by 50.8 cm)

signed Robert Henri, l.r.; also signed Robert Henri and titled 187/M "Hughie The Poet" on the reverse

oil on canvas

Painted in 1924.

PROVENANCE

Millicent Rogers
James Graham & Sons, New York
Acquired from the above, 1952

EXHIBITED

New York, Macbeth Gallery, Recent Paintings by Robert Henri, April-May 1925, no. 3
Rochester, New York, Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Irish and Spanish Portraits by Robert Henri, January-February 1926, no. 2
New York, Kraushaar Galleries, Robert Henri, March 1955
The Gallery of Modern Art, 1969
New York, The New York Cultural Center; New Jersey, Farleigh Dickinson University, Robert Henri 1865-1929: Painter, Teacher, Prophet, October-December 1969, no. 99, p. 108, illustrated p. 93
Fort Smith, Arkansas, The Fort Smith Art Center, The American Ashcan School of Painting, February 1971
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Oklahoma Art Center, The Eight and Followers, March-April 1971, no. 7
Wilmington, Delaware, Delaware Art Museum; University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Museum of Art; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum; Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum; Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Robert Henri: Painter, May 1984-June 1985, no. 93, p. 151, illustrated p. 150

NOTE

In 1913, and then again between 1924 and 1928, Robert and Marjorie Henri spent their summers on Achill Island along the west coast of Ireland. The local children willingly volunteered as models for Henri and the resulting portraits comprise one of his most important bodies of work. According to Violet Organ, Henri's sister-in-law, "Hughie, the Poet, was an orphan being educated and reared by the parish priest. His father had been drowned in a storm when out after a school of herring, and his mother did not long survive the tragedy. Hughie liked poetry and had a great memory for it and for what he read in the magazines Marjorie Henri gave him. He also had a way with bees, and twice a week he trudged up over the bog to Corrymore...with a supply of delicious heather honey which Robert Henri considered as necessary as part of his breakfast as the trout which he had caught the previous evening at Corrymore Lake in the mountains back of the house."