The Towhead (Primary Title)
Robert Henri, American, 1865 - 1929 (Artist)
The Towhead is one of fourteen portraits by Henri depicting Cori Peterson, a Dutch girl he met in Amsterdam in the summer of 1907. Capturing the full exuberance of the smiling child, the painting expresses the Ashcan dictum that value resides in the vernacular, even in the face of a seemingly anonymous child whose playfulness challenges high art’s supposed propriety. Henri described Cori as a “little white-headed, broad-faced, red-cheeked girl.”
Henri painted The Towhead with boldly applied strokes that suggest a laughing, moving, breathing individual. When one of Henri’s students later published the artist’s lectures, she called the volume The Art Spirit. The Towhead exemplifies the vivacity and spirit that Henri strove to communicate with his close-up views of figures teeming with life.
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio, February 1910
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