Boy in Blue Overalls 1921

Robert Henri’s painting of a Boy in Blue Overalls looks like it came together through a series of shifting marks in a warm but limited color palette. I’m thinking about Henri, and his relationship to Ashcan painting and how it’s a constant dance between trying to find new ways of depicting reality with being gestural and expressive. Just look at the face, there's this incredible back-and-forth between detail and abstraction. The eyes and mouth are clearly defined, but the rest of the face is just these dabs of ochre and pink that somehow come together to form a recognizable face. What’s so compelling about the painting is how Henri uses these techniques to capture not just the boy's likeness but something about his character, maybe a bit of melancholy. Henri, like other painters, engages in a timeless exchange of ideas, each stroke echoing the voices of those who came before and anticipating the whispers of those to come. Embracing uncertainty and ambiguity, Henri invites us to find multiple meanings in the simple image.