Robert Henri (artist) American, 1865 - 1929 Snow in New York, 1902 oil on canvas Overall: 81.3 x 65.5 cm (32 x 25 13/16 in.) framed: 105.4 x 89.2 x 10.1 cm (41 1/2 x 35 1/8 x 4 in.) Chester Dale Collection 1954.4.3

From the Tour: American Realists of the Early 1900s
Object 1 of 4

Robert Henri urged his students in Philadelphia and New York to reject idealism and to focus instead on reality, whether it be banal or harsh. “Draw your material from the life around you, from all of it. There is beauty in everything if it looks beautiful to your eyes. You can find it anywhere, everywhere.”

Henri’s Snow in New York depicts ordinary brownstone apartments hemmed in by city blocks of humdrum office buildings. This calm, stable geometry adds to the hush of new-fallen snow. The exact date inscribed—March 5, 1902—implies the canvas was painted in a single session. Its on-the-spot observations and spontaneous sketchiness reveal gray slush in the traffic ruts and yellow mud on the horsecart’s wheels.

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