Laughing Girl
Robert Henri
American Art
On View: American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, The City and the Rise of the Modern Woman, 1900–1945
In the summers of 1907 and 1910, Robert Henri traveled with his students from the New York School of Art to Haarlem, Netherlands, where he produced a series of canvases inspired by the children he encountered there. This lively rendering, executed swiftly in loose, broad brushstrokes, captures his sitter’s personality and exuberance. The work’s seeming spontaneity belies the extent to which the artist engaged with typing—in this case stereotypes of jolly Dutch children. The portrayal of types was largely indebted to the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Frans Hals, admired and emulated by Henri and by nineteenth-century Realists in France and Munich. Henri maintained a career-long interest in painting children, inspired by his travels abroad and in the United States.
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
1910
DIMENSIONS
24 1/8 × 20 1/8 in. (61.2 × 51.1 cm)
frame: 34 1/2 × 31 × 4 3/8 in. (87.6 × 78.7 × 11.1 cm)
SIGNATURE
Signed lower right: "Robert Henri"
INSCRIPTIONS
Inscribed verso, in black paint, prior to 1943 relining: "101/F"
ACCESSION NUMBER
12.93
CREDIT LINE
Frank Sherman Benson Fund
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and
we welcome any additional information you might have.
