In the early twentieth century, five determined young painters "bunched together like the fingers and thumb of a fist," to relate Alexander Eliot's graphic analogy, and "struck a mighty blow for artistic freedom of worship, and pushed American art into the quickened tempo of the modern age." The group was called variously the "New York Realists," the "Black Gang" (because of the considerable use of that color in their paintings), and the "Ashcan School." Stylistically their work had much in common with the earnest human dramas of such earlier European masters as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Diego Velásquez, and Francisco Goya. Their subject matter, on the other hand, was contemporary, even controversially so. Earthy views of urban America -- of the poor, the have-nots, the immigrants, the low-life -- shocked the genteel estheticism that had dominated late nineteenth-century American taste in the visual arts. The eldest and acknowledged leader of the "Gang" was the articulate and philosophical Robert Henri. (The other four were George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan.

Henri is recognized as much perhaps for his effective teaching and bold advocacy as for his painting. His widely read book, The Art Spirit (which is actually a collection of lectures and criticisms taken down and edited by student Margery Ryerson, published in 1923), reveals the fundamental thrust of his persuasive instruction, the following excerpts to wit:

All art that is worthwhile is a record of intense life, and each individual artist's work is a record of his special effort, search and findings.

The first prerequisite of the artist is that he . . . have guts -- without the attributes of the fighter, he can expect little or no success with an uninterested public.

Work quickly . . . Don't stop for anything but the essential . . . Keep the flow going . . . it's the spirit of the thing that counts.

That spirit, that sense of immediacy and vitality, is seen in Henri's mature style after about 1895, and is particularly evident in his portraits of children, a favorite topic. "If one has a love of children as human beings and realizes the greatness that is in them," Henri wrote, "no better subjects for painting can be found." And again: "In the faces of children I have seen a look of wisdom and of kindness expressed with such ease and such certainty that I know it was the expression of the whole race." "Feel the dignity of a child," Henri admonished. "Do not feel superior to him, for you are not."

The Hunter Museum's Pet, an excellent example of Henri's smaller child-portrait work, was painted in July 1927, according to the artist's personal records, and was probably completed in one or two sittings. It was originally titled after the subject's identity, Wee Annie Lavelle, but the nickname "pet" was entered above the title in the artist's record book by Henri's sister-in-law sometime after his death. The blond, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked Annie was one of Henri's many child friends who lived near the house in County Mayo, Ireland, where he summered in his later years.

The artist was born Robert Henry Cozad at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1865. In 1873 his father, a professional gambler, moved the family to the frontier of western Nebraska, and there founded the town of Cozad. Young Robert lived in the new community until 1882, when his father, in self-defense, shot a man to death in a gambling argument. Though exonerated by law enforcement officials, the father and family, fearing reprisals from the deceased's relatives, fled. They went first to Denver, then, sometime the following year, to Atlantic City. With the move east, the several family members, still fearing for their safety, adopted new names. Eighteen-year old Robert, by then realizing he wanted to pursue art as a career, elected to affect a French mode. He dropped the last name altogether. and converted the "y" in his middle name to "i" (though he always pronounced it as the Americanized Hen-rye).

In 1886 Henri enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied mainly with Thomas Anshutz. Two years later he went to Paris to attend the Acádemie Julian, and in 1891 he was admitted to the more competitive École des Beaux Arts. He returned to the United States later in '91, and re-enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy to study with American impressionist Robert Vonnoh. Henri's painting of the early to mid-1890s demonstrates his impressionist phase. Woman in Pink on Beach, an apt example from 1893, shows the characteristic impressionist preoccupation with the bright, airy out-of-doors, casually disposed subject, fleeting notion of time, and small-stroke, patchy brushwork and flecks of pigment. As the woman holds the brim of her hat against a seemingly brisk coastal breeze, the viewer senses the restless atmosphere and the transitory moment. The scene was posed near Avalon, New Jersey, where the artist sketched and painted for about a month.

Henri had begun his professional teaching in 1892 at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, but in '95 he returned to Europe. Gradually he embraced the darker-tonal, broadly brushed style for which he would become known. After visiting Spain in 1900, he settled in New York City, and soon was teaching at William Merritt Chase's New York School of Art. In 1906 he was elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design. Despite subsequent disagreements with the Academy over exhibition policies that he strongly believed were inadequate, he never completely forsook that venerable association. The most celebrated dispute resulted in his bolting to display his work as one of The Eight at Macbeth Gallery in 1908. And though he was not one of the more avant-garde element, Henri participated in the Armory Show of 1913.

From 1915 to 1928, nearly the end of his life, Henri taught at the Art Students League. He also operated his own Henri School of Art concurrently between 1909 and 1912. The 1917 edition of Who's Who in American Art listed more than one hundred figures who had studied under Henri, chief among which included George Bellows, Leon Kroll, Eugene Speicher, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Hopper.

Henri succumbed to cancer in July 1929. The Index of Twentieth Century Artists , compiled by the College Art Association of America, lists Henri's work as having been shown in 365 major exhibitions between 1892 and his death -- an average of nearly ten per year. As Rowland Elzia has noted: "These figures bear witness not only to Henri's industry and organization, but also to his immense popularity as an artist." In 1931, less than two years after his passing, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented the significant retrospective: Robert Henri Memorial Exhibition.