Woman in Manteau

Painted in Paris at a time when Robert Henri was determined to make his professional mark as a young artist, this work—in a dark, smoky palette deliberately recalling European Old Masters—features his favorite model, Berthe Terrier. Although he intentionally allied his art with revered tradition, Henri also added a contemporary mood by portraying Terrier with a bold, almost defiant expression.

X-radiographs reveal that Henri repainted this work extensively as he struggled to capture his model’s anatomy. At an earlier stage (see illustration), the placement of the shawl exposed much more of her shoulders and bust. Such focus on the nude reflects the artist’s early academic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Thomas Eakins’s Realist tradition was still strongly felt.