2023 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 144121 / 306 • View Catalog •
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VERSO
Label, The Bryden Art Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
According to Mary Carroll Nelson in The Legendary Artist of Taos, “His [Henning’s] work soon came to the attention of Carter H. Harrison Jr. Harrison was a prominent figure in Chicago, where he had five times been elected mayor and was a partner in an art-buying syndicate with the well-known meatpacking czar Oscar Mayer. Mayer and Harrison were sportsmen who favored Taos for their hunting trips in the mountains. Earlier they had sponsored Higgins and Ufer in their initial visits to Taos.
“In 1917 Harrison approached Hennings with a similar proposal to the one he made Higgins and Ufer. If he would paint in Taos for a while, up to a year, they would guarantee the purchase of his work and support him. Harrison’s offer provided Hennings with his artistic destiny. At a time of volatile stylistic changes in European art, Hennings found inspiration in a change of subject matter, while retaining his style – and a lovely, lyrical style it was.
“Hennings was an outstanding draftsman and was always aware of line in his monoprints, lithographs, etchings, and drawings, as well as his paintings. The line in Hennings’ compositions was often decoratively sinuous in an Art Nouveau manner. Favorite subjects were figures and trees, and he is known for his oils of Indians on horseback moving through dappled forest light. He was a sensitive painter, a classicist, with a delicate rather than a bold touch.
“The Taos scene appealed greatly to him. He later recalled, ‘I constantly grew more enthusiastic over the West for I was impressed with the possibilities for landscape and figure composition. New Mexico has almost made a landscape painter out of me, although I believe my strongest work is in figures.’”
PROVENANCE
Private collection, California
