Portrait of Mary Patten 1924

Robert Henri made this portrait of Mary Patten with oil paint, and it's so interesting to see how he builds up the image. It's all about these loose, confident strokes, you know? The way Henri plays with the materiality of the paint itself is really striking. The dark backdrop feels almost velvety, like he's scrubbed the paint into the canvas. Then you get to the girl’s face, and it’s all these dabs and dashes of color that give her this incredible, almost luminous quality. I'm really drawn to the little flecks of red on her cheeks, they really pop. It feels like Henri is trying to capture something fleeting, something almost impossible to pin down. Thinking about other artists who were doing similar things around the same time, I’m reminded of Manet, especially his portraits. It's like they're both trying to push the boundaries of what a portrait can be, embracing the unfinished, the imperfect, and the ambiguous.