Portrait of Catherine O'Malley 1924

Robert Henri painted this oil portrait of Catherine O’Malley sometime in the early 20th century, and what strikes me is the immediacy of it all. The red cheeks, those blue eyes, and that dark ground just feel really present. There’s a looseness to the handling of the paint, a certain rawness, that tells you a lot about Henri’s process. It's like he’s feeling his way around the form, those bold marks just piling up to make a face. The colors are pretty simplified too, which adds to the feeling of directness – red, blue, green, brown, straight from the tube. Look at the way he models the face with these broad strokes of pink and red, just allowing the color to describe the form, it's almost sculptural. Henri seems to draw on the directness of someone like Manet, but maybe also that loose, expressive handling of someone like Van Gogh. Ultimately, art is an ongoing conversation, and Henri is right in the middle of it.