Robert Henri

The American painter Robert Henri was born Robert Henry Cozad, and he changed his name to bury a killing. In 1882 his father, a gambler and land speculator who had founded the town of Cozad, Nebraska, shot and killed a rancher in a quarrel over grazing land. Cleared but disgraced, the family scattered and took new names, and young Robert became 'Robert Henri.'

He grew into one of the most influential art teachers the United States has had. Henri pushed his students to drop polite academic subjects and paint the ordinary life of the modern city, its streets, bars and crowds, in fast, dark, loose brushwork. Around him formed the group of realists later nicknamed the Ashcan School, for their taste for gritty urban scenes, and he led The Eight, a band of painters who broke from the conservative National Academy.

Through his classes at the Art Students League in New York passed Edward Hopper, George Bellows and Stuart Davis, among others. His talks were gathered by a former pupil into a book, The Art Spirit, published in 1923, which stayed in print for decades and is still put into the hands of art students today.