Boy in Blue Overalls 1921

Robert Henri painted this portrait, Boy in Blue Overalls, with oil on canvas, and right away you can see how the brushstrokes, laid down with a kind of loose, improvisational energy, are totally visible. The painting breathes because you can see the decisions being made in real time. Look closely, and you’ll notice the thick impasto, especially in the boy’s hair and the background. It's a scrummy surface! These aren't blended, fussy marks; they are confident and direct. It’s like Henri is wrestling with the paint, trying to capture not just the boy’s likeness but his essence, his very being. I keep thinking of Van Gogh, and that same desire to use paint to express something deeply felt. There's a tension between the specificity of the subject and the abstract qualities of the paint itself. It's this beautiful messiness that makes the painting so alive.