Jean Jacques Henner
French, 1829 - 1905
French painter. He was born into a peasant family in the Sundgau and received his first artistic training at Altkirch with Charles Goutzwiller (1810–1900) and later in Strasbourg in the studio of Gabriel-Christophe Guérin (1790–1846). In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a pupil of Michel-Martin Drolling and, from 1851, of François-Edouard Picot. While a student he was particularly drawn to portraiture, and during his frequent visits to Alsace he made portraits of his family as well as of the notables of the region. He also painted scenes of Alsatian peasant life (e.g. Marie-Ann Henner Churning Butter, 1856; Paris, Mus. Henner).
In 1858 Henner won the Prix de Rome with Adam and Eve Finding the Body of Abel (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). He then spent five years at the French Academy in Rome, where he discovered Caravaggio, Titian and Correggio, and was inspired by the landscapes of Rome and its surroundings (visited in 1859), of Florence, Venice and Milan (1860), and of Naples and Capri (1862).
Paintings he produced in Italy include the Repentant Magdalene (1860; Colmar, Mus. Unterlinden) and the Chaste Suzanne (1864; exh. Salon 1865; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay), both of which show the influence of Titian on his treatment of the nude, and of Corot on his landscape. Henner employed strong chiaroscuro effects, setting his pale figures against a dark background. Their contours were softened by the use of sfumato, for which he was indebted to Correggio, and wide, heavy brushstrokes.
In 1864 he returned to France and exhibited with enormous success at the Paris Salon between 1865 and 1903. After working for a time on quasi-mythological subjects, notably nymphs and naiads (e.g. Byblis, exh. Salon 1867; Dijon, Mus. B.-A.), he turned towards ‘idyllic’ painting and, after 1870, to Symbolism, occasionally with explicit political overtones. Alsace (1871; Paris, Mus. Henner), which shows a young Alsatian woman in mourning, is a political comment on the German annexation of the province after the Franco-Prussian War. The image achieved a wide circulation in the engraving (1871) by Léopold Flameng (1831–1911).
After 1870 Henner’s entire oeuvre became a meditation on the theme of death in various guises, notably in the Magdalene series (e.g. Magdalene in the Desert, exh. Salon 1874; Toulouse, Mus. Augustins; Magdalene Weeping, 1885, untraced), the Dead Christ series (e.g. Jesus in the Tomb, exh. Salon 1879; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay; Dead Christ, exh. Salon 1884; Lille, Mus. B.-A.), Andromeda (1879, untraced) and the Levite of Ephraim (exh. Salon 1898; Ottawa, Tannenbaum priv. col.). The Italian landscape featured in his early work was gradually replaced by the typically Alsatian Sundgau, expressing the artist’s nostalgia for his homeland.
Through the contacts he made in Rome, Henner obtained many portrait commissions, for example Félix Ravaisson-Mollier (exh. Salon 1886; Paris, Petit Pal.) and Laura Leroux (exh. Salon 1898; Angers, Mus. B.-A.), and these continued to be an important part of his output throughout his life. In 1923 his heirs founded a museum dedicated to him in Paris, in which most of his studio collection was housed.
Isabelle de Lannoy. "Henner, Jean-Jacques." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T037534 (accessed March 8, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
French, 1824 - 1898
