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William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943) was a broadly talented man who had a
primary career as a visual artist, but who also held careers as an architect
and as a furniture designer. Born in Medford, Massachusetts on June 4, 1877,
William Penhallow Henderson lived at various times in his youth in both
Uvalde, Texas and Clifton, Kansas before settling in Massachusetts. After
attending high school in Medford, Henderson went on to study at the
Massachusetts Normal Art School in Boston, where his coursework included
civil engineering, and finally the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where he
studied under the noted Boston School painter Edmund Charles Tarbell.
Henderson's education under Tarbell gave him a grounding in classical
drawing and painting techniques, and it instilled in him a sense of
naturalism. |
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In 1900, Henderson won the Paige Traveling Scholarship from the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts which allowed him the opportunity to study in Europe for over
two years. Although exposed to a broad range of art during his stay in
Europe, Henderson chose to study primarily the great masters Velasquez,
Rembrandt and Titian. He was also deeply influenced by the work of James
McNeill Whister and through that association, Japanese prints and paintings.
Indeed, Henderson was so taken with Japanese prints that he became an avid
collector. Henderson's work of the time was compared to Whistler's
impressionism, however, especially new and of lasting influence was the
Japanese flattening of space and subjective use of color that also
influenced Whistler. In addition to formal influences, a debt is owed to
Whistler in Henderson's development of the use of pastel. |
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After returning to the United States in 1904, Henderson accepted a teaching
position at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In Chicago, Henderson met and,
in 1905, married the poet Alice Corbin. Their only child, Alice Oliver, was
born in 1907. Henderson's association with Corbin introduced him to a large
circle of major modern poets and artists, which exposed him to an openness
toward experimentation that ran contrary to his nature and training. His
work from the years in Chicago reflect an artist searching for a mature
style. He vacillated between early modern techniques and his academic
training. During this time, Henderson focused largely on commissioned
portraiture, but he also produced ten large murals of the exploration of
Lake Michigan and the Mississippi by Marquette and Joliet, pastels of Lake
Bluff gardens, wood-block illustrations for Alice Corbin's Adam's Dream as well as her translation of
Hans Christian Andersen's Best Fairy Tales,
and costume and set designs for Alice in
Wonderland. He also received a commission from Frank Lloyd
Wright to design and execute murals at Midway Gardens that reflect an Art
Deco motif. |
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In 1916, due to Alice Corbin's declining health from tuberculosis, the family
moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and they quickly came to play a central role
in the burgeoning artistic community. Henderson continued to work on a broad
range of subject matter, but the emphasis shifted based on his new
environment. He produced brilliant landscapes including six large murals
created under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration for the
Santa Fe Federal Court House, interpretations of Native American ceremonial
dances, some portraiture primarily of the indigenous people, and a final
illustration project for Corbin's Brothers of
Light, a book which deals with the rites of the Penitente
Brotherhood during Lent and Holy Week. |
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In New Mexico, Henderson's work took on a new freedom and vigor. While he held
to the realistic subject matter and solid draftsmanship produced by his
training and temperament, his colors became brilliant and expressive, and
his work moved toward abstraction and, later, stylization. Cezannesque
techniques including simplified volumetric forms constructed of planes,
descriptions of objects through facet-like planes of color, and
multiple-point perspective became an important part of his composition after
1917. |
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In 1919, Henderson undertook careful study of Dynamic Symmetry, a theory of
design based on proportion believed have been used by the Greeks and the
Egyptians and based on ratios found in nature. The goal of Dynamic Symmetry
is to relate parts of a design to the whole so that the final piece provides
what its major proponent Jay Hambridge called "the balance of variety in
unity." Unlike so many modernists of the time, however, Hambridge believed
that instinct and feelings had to be controlled by intellect. The study of
Dynamic Symmetry and its two-dimensionality may have increased Henderson's
move away from naturalistic perspective. Interestingly, Henderson applied
Dynamic Symmetry to his furniture design and architecture as well as his
fine art, and Alice Corbin, simultaneously applied the theory to poetry. |
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Henderson also immersed himself in color theory in pursuit of a harmonious
palette. In the latter part of his career, his intense interest in color led
him to attempt to capture the spontaneity, tonality and texture of pastel in
an oil palette. Extensive color schemes worked out in manuscript notation
can be seen in Henderson's manuscripts. |
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Principles of composition and color, underlain and reiterated by draftsmanship,
were the foundation of Henderson' work. He felt free to depart from the
exact transcription of nature as long as the he held to the these basic
principles. Indeed, the rationalist in Henderson seemed to find a comfort in
tradition and technical theory that allowed him freedom of expression. But
above all, Henderson believed that the artist had to be concerned with
organic unity. Henderson continued to apply these principles to his work
until his death in 1943. |
