Decolonizing Modernism: Robert Henri's Portraits of the Tewa Pueblo Peoples

Author(s): ALLAN ANTLIFF

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 100, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2018), pp. 106-132
Published by: CAA
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 Decolonizing Modernism:
Robert Henri's Portraits of the

Tewa Pueblo Peoples

ALLAN ANTLIFF

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneou

nal force , in harmony with the requirements of nature.

- Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For" (1910)1

In recent years, the study of interrelations between early modernism in t

and the Pueblo communities of New Mexico has yielded many new areas
other issues, art historians have explored the complexities arising from t
ification of Pueblo cultural production as "high art," artistic construction
and modernist alliances in defense of Indigenous cultural practices in the
sanctioned repression.2 Robert Henri (1865-1929) is routinely cred
modernist of note to visit the region, in 1916 and 1917, and he e
of New York-based artists to follow in his wake (Fig. i).3 In addi
duced an impressive group of paintings portraying Indigenous su
Pueblos surrounding Santa Fe,4 work that Valerie Ann Leeds iden
tive in his career.5 What has yet to be acknowledged is how these p
in Henri s anarchism and his vehement opposition to World War
Henri is well known in the history of American modernism f
a succession of juryless, artist-organized exhibitions during the firs
of the twentieth century and for influencing hundreds of students
teaching.7 Specifically, he developed a style of realism that had a w
Rebecca Zurief s words, it was Henri s contention that

artistic expression was a means of living fully through part

the world

and the sketch, because "the brushstroke at the momen

ries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at th

into the work." The act of painting became a form of
the painting itself conveying a dynamic sense of chang
living thing.8

For a brief time, modernism in the United States was loosely

style until Cubism and other movements gained entry, espe
York's Armory Show (1913).
1 Peter A. Juley & Son, Robert Henri, ca. 1908, As to politics, Henri regarded his expressive palette as synonym
photograph. The Palace of the Governors Photo
ality and freedom in art," a stance that led him to anarchism, most lik
Archives (NMHM/DCA), New Mexico History Museum,
Santa Fe, negative 20110 (artwork in the public
when he was living in France.9 Evidence of anarchisms central impor
domain; photograph provided by The Palace of the
though art historians rarely attend to its implications.10 For example,
Governors Photo Archives [NMHM/DCA], New Mexico
History Museum) fellow artist John Sloan, who first met him in 1892, recalled he "was a

sympathy with my devotion to socialism."11 In keeping with this posit

Sloan Mikhail Bakunin's God and the State (1882), a passionately argu

106

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 power and institutional religion as mechanisms of class oppression.12 Linda Jones Gibbs has
documented Henri s encounters with anarchist street militancy in Paris during the 1890s and
contends, convincingly, that his early denunciations of the Salon system and academic values
evolved in tandem with support for anarchist-led demonstrations and strikes.13 In 1906 Henri
was advising his students to consult Leo Tolstoys What Is Art? (1898), in which the renegade
Christian anarchist called for work capable of rousing the masses that broke with the power
structures of its day by asserting an "authentic" expressionism rooted in the artists personal-
ity.14 Anarchist-communist geographer Peter Kropo tkin, author of numerous pamphlets and
books, including yl« Appeal to the Young (1880), The Conquest of Bread (1892), Anarchism: Its
Philosophy and Ideal (1896), Fields , Factories , and Workshops (1898), Mutual Aid: A Factor in the
Study of Evolution (1902), Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899), and The Great French Revolution
(1909), was another important influence.15 In 1914 we find Henri hanging his own paintings
alongside portrait photographs of Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, and others in the lecture
hall of the anarchist-run Ferrer Center and Modern School in Harlem, New York (named after

the assassinated Spanish educator-anarchist Francisco Ferrer, the cultural center occupied a
three-story brownstone at 63 East 107th Street and housed a "Modern School" for children as
well as adult classes).16

Artists associated with the movement caught his attention as well. In the late 1880s,
while living in Paris, he was particularly taken with the French Neo-Impressionists, who
spearheaded the artist-organized, juryless Salon des Indépendants and developed an aesthetic
to complement their political outlook (see below).17 However, the activist and writer Emma
Goldman, whom Henri befriended in 1911, was for him the key figure. Describing her as "a
great and noble woman" after attending a talk in Toledo, Ohio, on January 29 and leaving his
card, he was so enthralled that he purchased her book Anarchism and Other Essays (1907) at
the lecture and read it in one sitting on the train back to New York.18 Goldman was the cata-
lyst that drew Henri into the American branch of the movement. That fall he began attending
her lectures in New York, and they met in person after Henri introduced himself, telling her
he had read and "enjoyed" Goldman's Mother Earth journal (which was then edited by her
lifelong collaborator, Alexander Berkman).19 Discovering he had "an anarchist concept of art
and its relationship to life," she invited him to teach at the Ferrer Center, where Henri held a
free weekly art class (life classes on Tuesday and Friday evenings, lectures on painting Sunday
morning) from 1912 to 1918. 20 He would go on to serve on the centers Advisory Board (along
with Goldman and Berkman).21 Additionally, Henri, accompanied by his wife, Marjorie
Organ, supported Goldman during her trial for disseminating birth-control information in
April 1916.22 Goldman also shared Henri's admiration for Whitman, whose libertarian sexu-
ality and expansive conception of a multiethnic United States of America infused with "com-
radeship" enjoyed some cachet in the anarchist movement.23
Another bond was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Zurier and others argue shaped
Henri's conception of artistic independence and individualism.24 One of the most forceful pas-
sages in Anarchism and Other Essays ends by citing Emerson, merging his individualism with an
anarchist-communist conception of sociality. This is the argument that captivated Henri in 1911.
"Anarchism," writes Goldman,

is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which
maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises
are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in
man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts, any more

107 ROBERT HENRI S PORTRAITS OF THE TEWA PUEBLO PEOPLES

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 than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious
life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and
strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life;
society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence - that
is, the individual - pure and strong.
"The one thing of value in the world," says Emerson, "is the active soul;
this every man contains within him. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters
truth and creates." In other words, the individual instinct is the thing of value in the
world. It is the true soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is to come

a still greater truth, the re-born social soul.25

Henri's respect for Goldman was such that he would ask her to sit for a portrait in late March
1915, after her release from jail for propagating birth control.26 Henri completed three versions,
but in the 1930s Henri's sole heir, Violet Organ, destroyed all three.27 Goldman recalled vivid
discussions of "art, literature and libertarian education" during the sessions as Henri sought to
capture "the real Emma Goldman" (Fig. 2). 28
If Goldman made an impression on Henri, he, clearly, made
an impression on her, as evidenced by her choice, in November 1911,
to inaugurate a cross-country speaking tour with a talk, "Art and
Revolution," that pivots on his ideas (Henri attended the lecture,
which was delivered in New York).29 She began by referencing "social
unrest" as exemplified by activities at the Ferrer Center and then elab-
orated that this unrest, which aimed toward "a larger scope, a wider
horizon of individual expression and social harmony," was also trans-
forming the arts. The leading "rebel and iconoclast" in this regard was
Henri, who recognized that "the creative quality in man can never
assert itself at the command of the millionaire or institutionalized art

schools." Paraphrasing her friend, she concluded: "True creative genius,

which Mr. Henri believes is inherent in most of us, can be brought out
only by the growth of individuality and the fearless assertion of person-
ality, or to be more explicit, in harmony and freedom."30 In sum, Henri
regarded creative individuality in art as coexistent with his struggle
against authoritarianism in the art world, which, in turn, was part
of a general impetus toward radical social transformation: "Art
and Revolution."

We can probe these implications further by attending to "har-

mony and freedom," terms encoding the notion of a society recon-
structed according to the principles of anarchist-communism promoted
by Kropotkin and fellow geographer Elisée Reclus (Reclus authored
a series of authoritative studies on humanity's impact on the environ-
ment). Anarchist-communists reasoned that just as a spontaneous,
2 Robert Henri, Emma Goldman, 1915, oil on canvas, inherent, and natural order (or "law") undergirded the multitudinous interrelations of plants,
32 X 26 in. (81.2 x 66 cm). Destroyed March 7,
1934 (artwork in the public domain: photograph from
insects, and animals, so the cooperative federation of societies freed of authoritarian gov-
Catalogue of the Second Annual Exhibition of Selected ernment and exploitative economics would resolve the social strife of the present and bring
Paintings by American Artists and Sculpture by Anna V.
Hyatt [Detroit: Detroit Museum of Art, 1916], 22)
human activity into harmony with natural processes of change and transformation.31 "As
adherents to the principles of political ecology," writes Robyn Rosiak, the anarchist-commu-
nists envisaged "a classless global community comprised of small communes whose mem-
bers would live and work together cooperatively, educate each other mutually and govern

108 The Art Bulletin September 2018

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 themselves minimally according to their needs."32 The alternative was to continue down the
road of social turmoil and ecological devastation charted by exploitative industrial capital-
ism, a systemic violating of the natural order that anarchist-communists argued was not only
unsustainable and self-destructive but an aesthetic crime as well. In the words of Reclus:

A secret harmony exists between the earth and the peoples whom it nourishes and
when reckless societies allow themselves to meddle with that which creates the beauty
of their domain they always end up regretting it. In places where the land has been
defaced, where all poetry has disappeared from the countryside, the imagination is
extinguished, the mind becomes impoverished and routine and servility seize the
soul, inclining it towards torpor and death.33

While Reclus and Kropotkin theorized anarchist-communism, the Neo-Impressionists

developed a complementary aesthetic of visual harmony utilizing dabs of pure color based on
laws of optics. Just as "nature served as the basis for constructing a social order whose diverse
parts were perfectly harmonized," writes Rosiak, so the Neo-Impressionists' scientifically
derived aesthetic served as their painterly analogue for an anarchist-communist social order.34
This exemplary merging of aesthetics and anarchist-communism inspired Henri to recom-
mend Paul Signac s codification of the Neo-Impressionist technique, From Eugène Delacroix
to Neo-Impressionism (1899), to interested students.35 And, from 1909 on, he applied principles
of harmony to his own paintings, taking as his starting point the color system of Chicago art-
ist Hardesty Gillmore Maratta. Marattas system was a business venture: he marketed specially
prepared pigments to augment it and most likely sought out Henri in March 1909 because
he had just founded the Henri School of Art (1909-12). 36 Captivated, Henri induced George
Bellows and others in his circle to adopt Marattas scheme; students at the Henri School of
Art were also trained in the technique.37 William Innes Homer summarizes:

The system of color relationships devised by Maratta ... is based on the division of
the chromatic circle into twelve equal parts, in the manner of a clock face. Each color
on the circumference of the circle thus corresponds to a point on the prismatic spec-
trum; and the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) are placed equidistant from
each other. ... In addition to Marattas twelve basic "colors," there was another set of

pigments closely related to them, called "hues," which were manufactured by taking
each of the pure "colors" and reducing them in saturation by adding a carefully pre-
scribed proportion of black. In other words, a second set of grayish tones keyed to
the "colors" was fabricated for the purpose of systematically representing shadows,
aerial perspective, and so on

match every musical tone; this system, however, was not absolut
ing according to the key signature and whether the harmony wa
mode.38

In Marattas scheme there was no preexisting formula dictating what "key signature" one
began with. The response of the artist to the subject at hand was paramount, and this dove-
tailed with Henri's emphasis on emotive self-expression, which was integral to his anarchist
notion of creative independence.39 About 1914, Henri supplemented the Maratta technique
with a second color system propagated by Harvard lecturer Denman Waldo Ross. It mixed
black and white into the pigments to produce "harmonic sequences of color, value, and tone"
that heightened pictorial intensities.40 Homer has suggested that Henri's desire for a harmo-
nizing aesthetic to complement his anarchist politics inspired these pursuits, but it would
take World War I to make that fact explicit.41

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 With the outbreak of the European war in August 1914, Henri was outspokenly
opposed to the conflict (a stance his wife, by 1916, would not share).42 We can perceive his
attitude from his tribute to Goldman published in the March 1915 issue of Mother Earth
(Fig. 3). "The present horrible war," wrote Henri,

is only one of the plain proofs of ineffectiveness on the part of the institutions of our
civilization. It seems time to listen to other reason than that which has failed; to other

students of the causes of crime, of poverty and the scant fulfillment of man's promise.
It is time to let them talk plainly to us. Whitman, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Kropotkin, many
others, have set an undercurrent of new and stronger thought, and Emma Goldman
... is here to talk plainly to us as though we were free thinking creatures and not the
children of Puritans.43

Goldman inspired "each one to become a free and constructive thinker," and if that hap-
pened, "we would not be sitting, as we are doing now, saying 'This war is horrible, but we
suppose it's God's will.'"44 The previous month he expressed similar sentiments in his defin-
itive statement, "My People," which appeared in the February 1915 issue of the Craftsman
magazine (portions were reprinted in two installments that June in the socialist New York
Call newspaper).45 The editorial introduction to the Craftsman article informed readers that
"over the past summer [Henri has] been painting people of most vital interest to him in Cal-
ifornia and the southwest." "My People" had been written so the public "might more fully
3 Cover of Mother Earth 10, no. 1 (March 1915), understand his point of view."46 In fact, Henri would use this occasion to mount a critique of
8 X 5V2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm). Modern School Collection,
World War I, capitalism, and state power indebted, in the first instance, to Goldman.
Special Collections and University Archives, box 12,
folder 5, Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, At the invitation of a former student, Alice Klauber, Henri and Organ had left New
NJ, MC1055 (artwork in the public domain; photograph
York in May 1914 for the small oceanfront village of La Jolla, California, adjacent to San
provided by Special Collections and University
Archives, Rutgers University Libraries) Diego, so Henri could concentrate on painting. In late June, having settled in a house just
north of La Jolla, he set to work.47 Henri routinely sought out subjects connected to the
region he was visiting, but he could not find locally born Indigenous inhabitants to model.
As he caustically remarked in a letter, "progress" had "changed things very much here in
the last few years."48 Since the arrival of Spanish colonists in the 1760s, San Diego County's
Indigenous peoples had suffered through depopulating murders, disease, rapes, indentured
slavery, land seizures, Christianization campaigns, and, after 1875, forced displacement of
those who survived from their ancestral coastal homelands to a patchwork of reservations
located in the interior.49 No wonder Henri was discouraged.
Beginning with local Mexican, African American, and Chinese American sitters, he
eventually worked with six Indigenous women from the larger Southern California region
(none of the portraits survive), augmented in September by eight sitters from the Tewa
Pueblos surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico, who were in San Diego to assist anthropologist
Edgar L. Hewett with the "Indian" component of the city's Panama-California Exposition
(see below).50 Initially, Henri found his models himself (he encountered his lone African
American sitter, "Sylvester ... a great youngster," at the La Jolla railway station selling news-
papers) or enlisted the help of Klauber (she convinced "a beautiful Chinese girl . . . only eight
years old, looks older and is remarkably intelligent," to model).51
His earliest Indigenous sitter was a maid working for a "Mrs. Dean," who, Henri
related, "has great admiration for the Indians and has studied the individuals of three tribes
and their history."52 In a letter to his mother he identifies his subject as "perhaps 18." She was
from "one of the reservations ... in some sort of government school they have for the educa-
tion and perhaps subjugation of the Indians. I doubt if they teach them much or subjugate
them much." He continues, "she is a powerful Indian type, deep copper color, wide cheek

no The Art Bulletin Nepiemin i 10 ! 8

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 bones, straight nose - and the look of a sphinx

[Henri painted three] - and am greatly satisfied with them."53

This was his first Indigenous subject, though his respect for Ind
Americans was long-standing, as evidenced by his bitter response to t
than one hundred and fifty Mnikhówožu and Húokpapha Lakota m
children (an additional fifty were wounded) by the Seventh Cavalry o
Army on December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, near the Lak
Reservation.54 This now-infamous massacre was pr
"battle" in the press, and on its first anniversary (D
1891) twenty of its precipitators were awarded Med
for "gallantry," "bravery," and other qualities.55 Hen
speech by Oglala Lakota warrior-spokesperson Chie
Lúta (Red Cloud, Fig. 4), who related how his peop
being starved by the American government, which
treaties, stolen their land, repressed their cultural p
confined them to the "horrors" of a "prison" - the
Reservation - that those slaughtered at Wounded
attempted to escape.56 "Read Red Clouds speech ab
Indian trouble at home," Henri recorded: "Poor Lo

the Indians. The judge said, ťThe only good Indian

Indian.' What a wise and learned judge . . . what co
will agree with him!"57
At a time when European-American artists ro
portrayed Indigenous subjects as "uncivilized primi
of "savage" frontier attacks against blameless settlers
talized relics from a far-distant past, Henri sought
tropes, a fact that art historians have remarked on.5
lars of his Indigenous sitters mattered to him. After
to New York, Henri wrote to Hewett asking for th
names of three Tewa models (the Tewa also took Sp
and Henri refers to them), explaining he was prepa
log for "a special exhibition of my work at the Mac
NY."59 In record books documenting his paintings
care to identify his models by their Indigenous nam
English translations in brackets, and listed informa
4 John C. H. Grabili, Oglala Lakota Chiefs Mahpfya Lúta nation.60 Leeds, who has access to the record books, cites this sample e
(Red Cloud) (right) and Wašíčun Thašúnke (American
Horse) (left), 1891, photograph. Grabili Collection,
iation of Henri's six Californian sitters: "Indians of Bishop Calif. Can
Library of Congress, Washington, DC, lot 3076 They are Shoesheans [sic], but this is a generic term covering whole family of tribes
(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by
Indians are sometimes called Northern Paintes [sic]
Library of Congress)
paintings completed during his residency at La Jolla, only two dozen
trait of the unnamed eighteen-year-old is not among them. Without
only speculate, but given his reference to "Indians of Bishop Calif.,"
possibly a member of a branch of the Shoshone nation that allied wit
nation to defend their lands in Owen Valley, California, against Amer
United States Army during the 1860s.62 Both were eventually forced
vation near Bishop in 1912 (the federal government would appropriate
in 1932 and hand them over to the City of Los Angeles to serve as its
Bishop Paiute Reservation with 875 acres).63

m Robert henri's portraits of the tewa pueblo peoples

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 Like many European Americans of his generation Henri, who was born in 1865,
routinely referred to the ethnicity of those he painted, and I have found two instances of
derogatory language in his personal correspondence. Writing to Klauber announcing he
would accept her invitation to visit La Jolla on March 11, 1914, Henri related that he did not
want to paint "up to date" (that is, upper-class) people, and hoped he could find "half-bred"
[sic] subjects to sit "for a reasonable models wage."64 A second note to his old friend and
fellow realist William Glackens dated October 24, 1914, is harsher. Adopting a masculin-
ized language of bravado, Henri tells Glackens he has paintings of "chinks" (racist slang for
Chinese) and "greasers" (racist slang for Mexicans) to show him.65 But these are anomalies.
A typically worded letter from La Jolla to fellow artist Helen Niles dated September 8, 1914,
evidences no such prejudice. He reports depicting "many Indians, Chinese and Mexicans,"
condemns World War I and "militarism" at length, and then proclaims: "I have great faith in
the Revolution - not the war in Europe - but the great movement that's deeper throughout
the human brotherhood. This thing that's growing every day and that is to spread all over
and conquers without blood or violence whatsoever."66 As we shall see, Henri would expound
at length on the latter issue in "My People," rhetorically boring down through the substrate
of nationalism and racial difference to infuse his individuating portraits with an anarchist
politics of affect.

"My People" was illustrated with four works from La Jolla, each executed utilizing
his composite Maratta/Ross color system.67 Tam Gan (1914) features the daughter of a local
Chinese American vegetable seller. Yen Tsi Di - Ground Sparrow (1914, Fig. 5) portrays a
Tewa woman (the original painting is lost). Ramon - a Mexican (1914) captured the likeness
of La Jolla resident Ramon Vasquez, and the fourth portrait, Jim Lee , presents the father of

Tam Gan. A fifth surviving La Jolla portrait of a Tewa subject, Tom Po Qui (Water of Antelope
Lake) (1914, Fig. 6), will serve to illustrate Henri's painterly technique. This work was the
frontispiece for an article published in December 1914 in Arts and Decoration , in which Henri
declared "official" exhibiting in the United States "a failure" and called on New York City to
provide a publicly funded building where artists could organize their own shows unmediated
by the art market, with no juries or prizes to rank the results.68 Henri was clearly associating
the portrait with his anarchist-inspired plan (also promoted in the Ferrer Center's journal
Modern School) for circumnavigating structures of power in the capitalized art market.69 More
pointedly, the color harmony of this work relates to Henri's belief that anarchism participated
in a political ecology attuned to the natural order. In Tom Po Qui , light red, which predomi-
nates in Tom Po Quis shirt, is his primary "key signature." Harmonizing green-blue suffuses
her dress, and the portrait's background is permeated by the third primary color, light yellow.
Henri further accentuates his harmonizing scheme with two subdominant hues: the bright
green and red-orange elements of Tom Po Quis shawl. He also introduces Ross's system to
modulate his colors, creating three-dimensional illusionism through light and dark contrasts.
For example, lighter areas in Tom Po Quis deeply creased dress indicate her legs are project-
ing forward as she positions herself on the bench and confronts our gaze. These elements lend
solidity and a physical presence to the work. The overall effect is to suffuse Tom Po Qui in a
harmonious sensorium of colors imbued with "order" by Henri's emotionally charged empa-
thy for his sitter.

The portraits Henri chose to illustrate "My People" were not commissioned by
wealthy patrons, and Chinese, Mexican, and Indigenous subjects from California clearly
upended the equation of "American" with "European." Furthermore, astute readers of the
Craftsman would undoubtedly have noticed that Henri titled his statement after an arti-
cle by Sioux scholar Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman) - "'My People': The Indians'

112 The Art Bulletin September 2018

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5 Robert Henri, Yen Tsi Di- Ground Sparrow, 1914, oil Contribution to the Art of America" - which appeared three months previously in the
on canvas. Location unknown (artwork in the public
domain; photograph from Robert Henri, "My People,"
November 1914 issue of the journal, a point I will return to.7° For now I would note that
Craftsman, no. 27 [February 1915]: 464) Henri's selection dovetailed with the politics of radical cosmopolitanism, which anarchists

6 Robert Henri, Tom Po Qui (Water of Antelope Lake)/

in the United States, including Goldman, pitted against nationalism during World War I.71
Indian Girl/Ramoncita, 1914, oil on canvas, 40% x Kenyon Zimmer cites the chorus of a defiant song circulating in the anarchist movement to
32% in. (101.6 x 81.3 cm). Denver Art Museum,
William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, 2001.461
illustrate their outlook: "The whole world is our country / liberty is our law / and a rebellious
(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by thought / is in our hearts."72 The lyric, he notes, distilled anarchisms antinationalist "essen-
Denver Art Museum)
tials": "mobility, cosmopolitanism, libertarianism, and unceasing rebellion."73
Henri begins "My People" in like fashion by bluntly declaring: "I find as I go out,
from one land to another seeking my people' that I have none of that cruel, fearful posses-
sion known as patriotism; no blind, intense devotion for an institution that has stiffened in
chains of its own making. My love of mankind is individual, not national" (Goldman con-
demned patriotism in much the same terms in Anarchism and Other Essays , the book Henri
read so fervently after seeing her speak in Toledo).74 Henri then describes being compelled
to portray certain individuals because they embodied a felt knowledge of the spontaneous
harmony infusing "Nature." "Everywhere I find that the moment order in Nature is under-
stood and freely shown," he wrote, "the result is nobility - the Irish peasant has nobility of
language and facial expression; the North American Indian has nobility of poise, of gesture;

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 nearly all children have nobility of impulse."75 In the arts, the same natural order was man-
ifested in a variety of ways, including the harmonics of the musical scale, the laws of pro-
portion in sculpture, and painting emulating the color spectrum of a rainbow (for example,
Henris Marratta/Ross-based aesthetic). "This orderliness," Henri continued, "must exist
or the world could not hold together. And it is a vision of orderliness that enables an artist
along any line whatsoever to capture and present, through his imagination, the wonder that
stimulates life."76

State power and capitalist exploitation, in contrast, imposed order through violence.
War was the ultimate ordering instrument of "institutionalism" (the state) in the service
of a "minority" (the wealthy), both of which were arrayed against the creative potential of
humanity (again, Goldman mounts a similar argument m Anarchism and Other Essays) . 77 "It
is disorder in the mind of man that produces chaos of the kind that brings about war as we
are today overwhelmed with," Henri argued. "It is the failure to see the various phases of
life in their ultimate relation that brings about militarism, slavery, the longing of one nation
to conquer another, and the willingness to destroy for selfish, inhuman purposes. Any right
understanding of the proper relationship of man to man and man to the universe would
make war impossible."78 "When the poet, the painter, the scientist, the inventor, the labor-
ing man, the philosopher see the need of working together for the welfare of the [human]
race," he mused, "a beautiful order will be the result and war will be as impossible as peace
is today."79

The task ahead, therefore, was to reconstitute society along anarchist lines, a process
to be initiated by those in touch with the spontaneously creative ordering processes infusing
the natural world. "Revolutionary parties that break away from old institutions, from dead
organizations," Henri declared, were "always headed by men with a vision of order."80 Echoing
Goldman, he suggested that once anarchism transformed society at large all people could realize
their latent sense of order-in-freedom, their natural "essence."81 "Humanity needs a fine, sure

freedom to express [the orderly principles of Nature]," he wrote. "We only ask for each person"

the freedom which we accord to Nature when we attempt to hold her within our grasp. If

we are cultivating fruit in an orchard, we wish that particular fruit to grow in its own way;

we give it the soil it needs, the amount of moisture, the amount of care, but we do not treat

the apple tree as we would the pear tree or the vineyard on the hillside. Each is allowed free-

dom of its own kind and the result is the perfection of growth which can be accomplished
in no other way. The time must come when the same freedom is allowed the individual;

each in his own way must develop according to Nature s purpose, the body must be but the
channel for the expression of purpose, interest, emotion, labor.82

Portraiture untethered from the dictates of a commission or subject and aesthetic-related val-
ues imposed on the artist was Henri s means of revealing this insight in others. Stating he was
"only seeking to capture what I have discovered in a few people," he continued:

Every nation in the world in spite of itself produces the occasional individual that does
express in some sense this beauty. ... It is this element in people which is the essence of

life, which springs out away from the institution, which is the reformation upon which
the institution is founded, which laughs at all boundaries and which in every generation
is the beginning, the birth of new greatness, which holds in solution all genius, all true
progress, all significant beauty.83

Here we have a conception of social transformation resembling Voltairine de Cleyre s

thesis in "Anarchism and American Traditions," which appeared in two installments in the

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 December 1908 and January 1909 issues of Mother Earth (Fig. 7). The essay was reprinted as a
pamphlet (1909) and included in the Mother Earth Press edition of de Cleyre s Selected Works
(1914).84 According to de Cleyre, "America" was best understood as a historical construct
birthed from a revolution against the very tyrannies it began replicating once revolt calcified
into nationhood. In support of her contention she referred to the republic s founder-revo-
lutionaries (recall Henri's institution-shattering visionaries), who, much like contemporary
anarchists, premised "equal liberty" for all on the supposition that "there can be free feder-
ation only when there are free communities to federate."85 Citing Thomas Jefferson's praise
for those who live "without government, as among our Indians" and his conclusion that the
"degeneracy of government" could be prevented only by "a little rebellion now and then," she
argued that anarchism was the force of renewal that could overthrow the hegemonic polity
gripping the country and replace it with an ever-expanding relational network of freely fed-
erating, autonomous communities, in effect dissolving the political imaginary of the United
States.86 "When Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world,"

de Cleyre predicted, "there shall be neither kings nor Americans, only men; over the whole
earth, men."87 In like fashion, Henri's conception of social freedom would come into being
only after the racialized shackles of United States patriotism - "our little nationalism," as he

7 M. Herbert Bridle, Voltairine de Cleyre, 1901, put it - were broken by anticapitalist revolutionaries attuned to nature and its ordering prin-
photograph, 6 % x 4 V4 in. (16.5 x 10.8 cm). The ciples.88 This is the radical thrust of his art, which has long eluded art historians who persist
Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, LPF.0224
(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by in interpreting his work as nationalist in intent. A letter to Niles written on February 14, the
The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan) same month "My People" was published, makes his position abundantly clear:

Nationalism in art has been a topic lately - a sort of mask behind which greed has com-
mitted murder and outrage

things they have done everything in their power to destroy. . . all fre

their work always in spite of the bitterest opposition of the State and

of the State. The State has no right to claim that it is fighting for cultu

against culture, just as it has always done in times of peace or in time

masters of art, and of the sciences, the free creative spirits, belong to

[sic] country. They do belong to a great free Brotherhood, a brotherh

the world over and the members of this brotherhood, unlike those of

die

Let us turn, then, to Ohiyesa's "My People." Following the tenets of

munism, Henri equated beauty with nature's harmonizing order and sugg
who are sensitized to it, notably, Indigenous North Americans, were imbu
"nobility" by means of their connectedness to "life," which they expressed
"gesture," "language," and other avenues not ordinarily deemed artistic.90
a very similar thesis when discussing Indigenous cultures (Fig. 8). "In his s
which is closely akin to religious feeling," he wrote, "the American Indian

In accord with his nature and beliefs, he does not pretend to imitate
or to reproduce exactly the work of the Great Artist. That which is
be trafficked with, but must be reverenced and adored only. It must
and action. The symmetrical and graceful body must express someth
in our eyes, is always fresh and living, even as God Himself dresses
son of the year. It might be "artistic" to imitate Nature and even try
her, but we Indians think it very tiresome, especially as one consider
side of the work - the pigment, the brush, the canvas!91

115 Robert henri's portraits of the tewa pueblo peoples

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 Both Henri and Ohiyesa revere the natural world and qualities of self-expressive (bodily)
artistry that are, in effect, an extension of it. Furthermore, the anarchist-communist condem-
nation of exploitation as an attack on beauty, which is synonymous with the spontaneous
order animating nature, also echoes with Ohiyesas perspective, as encapsulated in his story
of a Sioux elder touring an art exhibition in Washington, DC. "'Ah!' exclaimed the old man,
'such is the strange philosophy of the white man! He hews down the forest that has stood for
centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of mother earth, and causes the sil-
very water-courses to waste and vanish away. He ruthlessly disfigures God s own pictures and
monuments, and then daubs a flat surface with many colors, and praises his work as a master-
piece!"' "This is the spirit of the original American," concludes Ohiyesa, who "holds nature to
be the measure of consummate beauty, and its destruction, sacrilege."92
Arguably then, Henri's decision to title his article "My People" was no casual one:
it suggests an indebtedness to and affinity with the Indigenous perspective presented by
Ohiyesa, albeit with a caveat. The affective bond with nature and expansive conception of
artistry Ohiyesa praises are exclusively Indigenous and in opposition to the "white man's"
despoiling of the natural world, which Europeans compensate for by idealizing beauty on the
canvas. His purpose is to assert his peoples' cultural autonomy and self-respect through differ-

8 Frank A. Waugh, Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) in

ence. Henri, on the other hand, is faced with the challenge of dissolving the racialized capital-
Native Dress, Eagle-Feather Bonnet, with Hatchet, ist nation-state that claims him for its own, a state that has visited violence and dispossession
ca. 1910, photograph, 4 x 33M in. (10 x 8.5 cm).
University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries,
on Indigenous peoples and others. Searching for affinities across a multiplicity of divides,
Special Collections and University Archives (artwork in believing in the capacity of those from different ethnicities to connect with the natural order,
the public domain; photograph provided by University
of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, Special
even as authoritarian social and political forces work to drive those ethnicities apart, he sig-
Collections and University Archives) naled Ohiyesas outlook resonated with his own: but he had yet to consider how Indigenous
societies might offer a way out of the nation-state system.
The California trip not only inspired Henri to write "My People," it also marks the
beginning of a new phase in his oeuvre, when, for a time, Indigenous subjects predominate.
While summering at La Jolla, Henri had befriended Hewett, director of the newly established
Santa Fe Museum of New Mexico (1907) and founder-director of the School of American
Anthropology. As I have noted, Yen Tsi Di and other Tewa who sat for Henri were assisting
in preparations for the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, scheduled to open January 1,
1915.93 Hewett, who was in charge of the Ethnology and Arts pavilions, was in town to oversee
the construction of the "Indian Arts" complex, which included an "Indian Arts Building"
and a ten-acre "Painted Desert Exhibit" replete with a life-size four-story pueblo and replica
cliff dwellings.94 Here, for the duration of the exposition, he hired "some three hundred
Apache, Navajo, Pueblo and Havasupai Indians [who] moved into teepees, hogans, pueb-
los and brush huts where they staged daily ceremonies, wove blankets, and made baskets"
(Fig. 9). 95 Introductions to Henri came through Klauber, who sat on the exposition's Fine Arts
Committee.96 Tasked with mounting an exhibition of "modern American art," Hewett asked
her to enlist Henri's assistance and Henri, in effect, took over.97 He selected the artists, chose

the art, supervised the hanging arrangements, and even decided on the wall color of the exhi-
bition galleries.98
As Hewett was busy in San Diego, restoration of the adobe Spanish colonial
Governor's Palace in Santa Fes central plaza, which housed the Museum of New Mexico and
School of American Anthropology, was nearing completion (the building reopened in 1915).
The museum's mandate - "restoring, preserving, and displaying the archaeology, ethnology,
history, and art of the southwest" - was complemented by the school's mission: "to promote
and carry on research in the archaeology and related branches of the science of man and to
foster art in all its branches through exhibitions and by other means which may from time to

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 time be desirable."99 Hewett ran both institutions with the assistance of artist-curator Kenneth

Chapman until 1946, in addition to taking up an appointment as the first director of San
Diego's Museum of Man in 1915 (during the Panama-California Exposition he purchased a
residence in San Diego and henceforth divided his time between there and Santa Fe). 100
His plans included engaging visiting artists-in-residence with local community life,
including the cultural activities of Pueblo peoples living near Santa Fe. To this end, renova-
tions of the Governor s Palace incorporated studio and exhibition spaces for artists, who were

expected to participate in the schools archaeological fieldwork and instruct students attending
its summer educational program.101 As the palace neared
completion, Hewett gathered a group of influential
allies to petition the state legislature to build an adjacent
Museum of Fine Arts "devoted to the purpose of an art

gallery, free to the public."102 The project was approved, a

site was chosen next to the palace, and construction com-
menced in fall 1915.103

Impressed by Henri's drive and ambition, Hewett

invited him to serve as artist-in-residence, but Henri was

unable to take the offer up until the summer of 1916.104

A letter dated July 13, 1916, reveals how anxious Hewett
was to secure Henri's involvement in his various projects.
Having returned to Santa Fe from a vacation to find the
artist had not yet arrived, he immediately wrote to New
York promising Henri a studio "at your disposal for what-
ever time you can be here" and any other "facilities that
you would need." He continued:

We are just building our new Art Museum and

have some plans with reference to the future work

in art here . . . the new Art Museum, together

with the facilities which we can offer in the way

of student and exhibition galleries will be a great

additional stimulus. Now, before things get much
further along, I am tremendously anxious to have
the ideals in Art that you stand for brought into
the ken of our people.105

Henri, accompanied by Organ, arrived on July 25 and

stayed on until October 13. 106 During these months
9 "In the Painted Desert on the Grounds of the San
Hewett introduced the couple to the ceremonies and cultural activities of Tewa peoples at
Diego Exposition - by the Taos Pueblo," from The
Official Guidebook of the Panama California Exposition,
theTesuque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara (Fig. 10), and San Domingo Pueblos (additionally,
San Diego, 1915, San Diego: Panama California they attended Tiwa ceremonies107 at the Taos Pueblo and Keresan ceremonies at the Acoma
Exposition, 1915, 32 (artwork in the public domain)
Pueblo).108 The 1916 trip was followed by a lengthier stay over the summer and winter of
10 Visitors Watching Parade of the Harvest Dance by 1917, when Henri and Organ were present for Hewett 's crowning achievement: the official
Pueblo Indians, Santa Ciara, ca. 1915, 4 x 6 in. (10 x
10.5 cm). The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives
opening of Santa Fes Museum of Fine Arts on November 21, 1917.109 During this excursion
(NMHM/DCA), New Mexico History Museum, Santa they bought a car to gain easier access to the Pueblos: again they attended ceremonies at the
Fe, negative 180583 (artwork in the public domain;
photograph provided by The Palace of the Governors
Tesuque, San Ildefonso, Taos, and Acoma Pueblos, as well as the Keresan Laguna Pueblo.110
Photo Archives [NMHM/DCA], New Mexico History Henri's output during both residencies was astounding. Two and a half months in 1916
Museum)
yielded more than one hundred and five major works (ninety-five portraits), with Indigenous
subjects constituting half his total output.111 The 1917 trip produced one hundred additional

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 paintings, including seventy-six more portraits.112 Apart from portraits of a mother and child

and of a mature woman, his Indigenous sitters were youths from the Tewa Pueblos near Santa
Fe or the Santa Fe Indian School, ranging in age from infant to teenager.113
In his groundbreaking study, Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde,
Jackson Rushing provides an overview of the state of the literature concerning Henri s
Indigenous portraits that still prevails: namely, that they reflect an escapist or nationalist
agenda. J. J. Brody posits Henri was leaving behind gritty socially critical urban subjects in
favor of "exotic" subject matter while, more positively, Patricia Janis Broder contextualizes his
turn as an expansion of the socioeconomic range of Henris subject matter in keeping with
his "class conscious" approach to art making. William H. Truettner suggests the portraits
represent a quest, on Henri s part, for a more authentic, ethnic-based grounding for American
nationalism, a reading Rushing nuances by interpreting the work as a gesture toward inclu-
siveness, in which Henri sought to incorporate Indigenous peoples into the United States'
national mosaic by refusing to represent his subjects as exotic "others."114 Certainly, Henri's
portraits make for a telling contrast with the triumphal sentimentalism of work such as
James Earl Fräsers monumental sculptural reckoning for San Francisco's 191 5 Panama-Pacific
Exposition, The End of the Trail (ca. 1894, Fig. 11), in which Indigenous peoples are depicted
as terminally in decline, overrun by the march of American civilization.115 Symptomatic of
this fact, Rushing points out, when Henri exhibited these portraits on returning to New York,
many decried the absence of familiar genre props and some, in the artist's words, objected "to
[the subject of] Indians at all."116 Noting the artist's respectful approach, he concludes Henri
"always [had] a national art spirit in mind" and that, in context, "finding the spiritual great-
ness of the southwest was related to his desire to democratize American art.""7

I am arguing, however, that Henri was not driven by a "national art spirit" - that is,

11 James Earl Fraser, The End of the Trail, ca. 1894 a conception bound up with American patriotism - but was, rather, guided by a belief in the
(plaster replica with alterations, 1915), height 25 ft. "nobility" of outstanding individuals attuned to a universalizing, anarchist understanding of our
(7.62 m). National Cowboy and Western Heritage
Museum, Oklahoma City (artwork in the public domain; being in the world. This is why Henri opens "My People" denouncing "patriotism," proclaiming
photograph from Stella G. S. Perry, The Sculpture and his allegiance lies elsewhere, with "mankind."118 It is fair to say that during World War I when, to
Mural Decoration of the Exposition [San Francisco:
P Elder, 1915], 73) paraphrase Henri, world-dominating nation-states were "diseased in murder, fire, and hideous
atrocity," such individuals constituted, for him, a slender thread of hope in an otherwise bleak

present.119 In this respect, Henri's Tewa Pueblo portraits merit closer scrutiny.

When assessing these works we need to consider Henri's involvement in the Ferrer
Center, where he mixed with Goldman and other anarchists associated with Mother Earth. In

these circles, the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico were seen as contiguous with the Indigenous
peoples of northwestern Mexico who, from 1911 into the early 1920s, allied with rebel forces
in armed insurrection against a succession of Mexican governments. These included anarchist-
communist "Land and Liberty" militias fighting under the banner of the Partido Liberal
Mexicano (PLM), led by Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón.120 The Magóns edited the
organization's Spanish-language journal Regeneración , which was published in Los Angeles,
promoted in Mother Earth, and available at the Ferrer Center (Henri was fluent in Spanish).121
The politics of the movement are encapsulated in the "Land and Liberty" cover for the
September 3, 1910, issue of Regeneración, in which a rising sun at the top is emblazoned with
a portrait of Kropotkin, who is flanked by four prominent French, Italian, and Spanish
anarchists (Fig. 12). Five leading figures in the "Land and Liberty" movement, including the
Magón brothers, are positioned directly below. Three allegorical female figures on horseback
occupy most of the poster. They unfurl banners - "The Ideal"; "Advance the Revolution";
and "Land and Liberty" - as they traverse the globe from Europe to the Americas. On the
bottom, the title of Reclus's most famous exposition of anarchist-communism - Evolution

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12 Land and Liberty, cover of Regeneración, and Revolution (1898) - is flanked by portraits of Reclus and the Mexican anarchist Praxedis
September 3, 1910, 29% x 23% in. (74.9 x 59.7 cm)
(artwork in the public domain)
Guerrero. Active across the borderlands of Mexico and the United States, at one point "Land
and Liberty" groups planned an armed uprising involving "Latin," "Negro," and "Japanese"
13 "The Yaquis - Most Stubborn Fighters on Earth,"
Los Angeles Sunday Herald, January 31, 1909, Feature
militants in alliance with Indigenous peoples to liberate the territories of Texas, New Mexico,
Section, 1 (artwork in the public domain) Arizona, Colorado, and California.122 Though the plan was never realized, in 1911 the Mexican
state of Baja California was briefly invaded by an insurgent force composed of Mexicans,
Indigenous fighters from Mexico and Canada, members of the Industrial Workers of the
World union, and others.123 Goldmans circle supported the "Land and Liberty" move-
ment, and the Ferrer Center, which housed Henri s art class, was also home to a "Mexican

Revolution Committee" and fund-raising activities.124

Between December 1911 and February 1912, Mother Earth published a three-part arti-
cle by de Cleyre, "The Mexican Revolution," that Henri undoubtedly absorbed (recall he told
Goldman he was reading the journal in fall 1911).125 De Cleyre praised the Indigenous peoples
of northern Mexico, who were "similar in character to the Pueblos [of the] southwestern

States . . . communistic in many of their social customs and, like all Indians, invincible haters
of authority."126 Drawing in part on the writings of Ricardo Flores Magón in Regeneración ,
she outlined how the regions Indigenous peoples, including the Yaqui of Mexico's Sorona
River valley (Fig. 13), traditionally held lands in common, maintained cooperative irrigation
systems, and governed themselves with no legal code or administrative bureaucracy.127 In
effect, they had developed a social system of cooperative communalism based on "ancient
tribal rights and customs" attuned to the ecology of the region. In her words, "[The Indian]
feels himself more a part of nature than a white man does. All his legends are of wanderings
with nature, of forests, streams, plants, animals."128 De Cleyre contrasted this with the Mexican

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 government s imposition of "civilization" - European-modeled state governance and capitalist
economics - in the region. In the late nineteenth century, the central government had decided
to expand the capitalist economy of Mexico (and its governing power) by awarding land con-
cessions to "'develop' mineral resources [and] modern industries.'"129 Governors, magistrates,
and investors were granted ownership of vast landholdings with no regard to the Indigenous
occupants. Over the next forty years, racist legal chicanery, enforced by the military and police,

brutalized the region's peoples. The Yaqui fought back and, in the early 1900s, the government
deported thousands to the tropical Yucatán Peninsula in an attempt to break their resistance. "I
think it would require a Biblical prophet," she added, "to describe the abomination of desola-
tion'" that hung over northwest Mexico before "the Yaquis and other Indian people" had joined
the recent rebellions in a bid to restore their traditional way of life.130

The constructive way forward was to recognize the autonomy of Indigenous peoples,
leaving them to adopt aspects of "civilization" (agricultural techniques, for example) in their
traditional territories as they saw fit while preserving their "communistic" social order.131 Waxing

ironic, de Cleyre offered an alternative, as pioneered by the United States: "to kill out the Indians
altogether," clearing the way for settlement by those already acculturated to state power and
capitalism. Acknowledging her own citizenship and taking responsibility for its implications, de
Cleyre concluded: "No one who looks forward to the final unification and liberation of man-

kind, to the incorporation of the several goodnesses [sic] of the various races in the one universal

race, can ever read those pages of our history without burning shame and fathomless regret."132
While in Santa Fe, Henri reached the same conclusion as de Cleyre, namely, that the
Pueblo peoples' way of life was "communistic" and deeply antiauthoritarian. Consider a letter to
an unknown correspondent reprinted in Henri's compendium of statements and articles, The Art

Spirit (1923). 133 It was written in Santa Fe at some point during 1916 or 1917, when Hewett was

introducing Henri to nearby Tewa Pueblos. Here, he expounded an analysis in which individual
visionaries attuned to life's natural order thrived in an Indigenous context. Henri described the
"beautiful pottery and rugs" of the Pueblo peoples as simultaneously self-expressive and collec-
tive, writing that "although some hands lead, the whole pueblo seems responsible for the work
which stands in for their communal greatness." He continued: "They have art as a part of each

one's life. The whole pueblo manifests itself in a piece of pottery." This made for a telling contrast
with the capitalist United States' commodified, isolated, "genius artist": "With us, so far, the artist

works alone. Our neighbor who does not paint does not feel himself an artist. We allot to some
the gift of genius; to all the rest, practical business."134 Eschewing tropes of the "noble savage"

living in timeless innocence, Henri observed that Indigenous peoples had grappled with "war and
strife, and all the fruits of material greed - like ourselves." That said, Pueblo societies sustained

"a bright spark of spiritual life," an "art spirit" [The Art Spirits title is taken from this passage] in

which everyone "lived and expressed his life according to his strength; was a spiritual genius, an
artist to his fullest extent."135 Emulating the Pueblos was imperative because

greatness in art can only come by the art spirit entering the life of the people, not as a
thing apart, but as the greatest essential of life to each one. It is to make life produc-
tive of light - a spiritual influence. It is to enter government and the whole material
existence as the essential influence, and it alone will keep government straight, end
wars and strife; do away with material greed. When America is an art country, there
will not be three or five or seven arts, but there will be the thousands of arts - or the

one art, the art of life manifesting itself in every work of man, be it painting or what-
ever. We will then have to give in kind for what we get. And every man will be a true
enrichment to the other.136

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 Henri s praise for the Pueblo peoples' collectivist artistry and related critique of the
artist s isolation under capitalism might well be indebted to Kropotkins speculation in The
Conquest of Bread (1892) that artists in an anarchist-communist society would draw inspi-
ration from "ideals held in common within the broader community.137 Liberating art from
capitalization, anarchism, Kropotkin posited, would restore its capacity to contribute toward
the well-being of society at the same time
as it enriched the lives of each individ-

ual, suffusing "everything that surrounds

man" with "artistic form."138 De Cleyre's
characterizations of the Pueblo societ-
ies of the Southwest would also have

inclined Henri to regard them through

an anarchist lens. But Henri's in-depth
introduction to Tewa Pueblos during his
extended residencies in Santa Fe played
the most important role. Self-governing
and communal, Tewa Pueblo peoples
lived by hunting and farming on irrigated
lands with no deeds of individual owner-

ship, and their ecological consciousness,

as expressed in the ceremonies witnessed
by Henri, was integral.139 Surely, as Henri
painted, he meditated on how deeply res-
onant their way of life was with his own
ideals.140

Henri not only wrote admiringly

of pottery as an individuating embodi-
ment of Tewa Pueblo communitarianism,

he also communicated this concept in

a painting - Gregorita with the Santa
Clara Bowl (191 7, Fig. 14). Leeds writes
that his model, twelve-year-old Gregorita
Baca, "readily agreed" to pose because
she would not have to attend the Santa

Fe Indian School's "strict classes" (recall

Henri searched out models at the Indian

School and nearby Pueblos).141 Brody

throws more light on why Baca would
have been so eager to escape the school:

14 Robert Henri, Gregorita with the Santa Clara Bowl ,

The Santa Fe Indian School was a quasi-military boarding school designed to accul-
1917, oil on canvas, 32 x 26 in. (81.3 x 66cm).
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita,
turate its students to the customs and values of the Euro-American world -
Kansas (artwork in the public domain; photograph
[Students] lived in barracks segregated by gender, wore uniforms, and were required
courtesy of Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State
University) to behave by the rules, speak the language, and practice the religions of Euro-
American society . . . except for those who came from near-by pueblos, most Indian
school students had no direct contact with home for long periods and were, in effect,
denied access to the network of family, social and ritual relationships that until then
had formed the matrix of their lives.142

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15 Robert Henri, Maria and Baby, 1917, oil on canvas, Interviewed by Leeds in 1998, Baca recalled posing with various accessories in the
32 X 26 in. (81.3 x 66 cm). Indianapolis Museum of
Art, gift of Harrison Eiteljorg Gallery of Western Art
studio while Henri painted rapidly.143 Gregorita with the Santa Clara Bowl associates Baca
(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by with a bowl from the Tewa Santa Clara Pueblo, and its visual prominence can be under-
the Indianapolis Museum of Art)
stood as a celebration of the artistry that went into its making (the bowl is an olla, used for
16 T. Harmon Parkhurst, Potter Maria Martinez of San storing grain or water).144 At the time it was not customary for Santa Claras potters - who
Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, ca. 1915, photograph.
The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/
were exclusively women - to sign their names or identify themselves as an object s creator in
DCA), New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, negative any way. Pueblo inhabitants would know who created a pot or bowl by looking at its design
42317 (artwork in the public domain; photograph
provided by The Palace of the Governors Photo
and decorative features, but signature authorship was of little importance.145 Accordingly,
Archives [NMHM/DCA], New Mexico History Museum) Henri posed her with her arm around the bowl, suggesting an aesthetic connection down
through the generations that is not about creative "ownership" but, rather, collective artistry
individuated. Another portrait, Maria and Baby (1917), presents a more literal generational
narrative (Fig. 15). In this instance, the traditionally dressed woman cradling her infant son,
John Martinez (b. 1915), is Maria Montoya Martinez of the Tewa San Ildefonso Pueblo, whose
pottery making was championed (and nurtured) by Hewett and his staff beginning in 1908
(Fig. 16). 146 That year her husband, Julian Martinez, was hired to assist with the excavation of

an ancient Tewa settlement adjacent to the San Ildefonso and Santa Clara Pueblos (the Puye
Cliff dwellings), and Martinez, who had learned pottery making from her aunt, accompanied
him to the site. Hewett (or his assistant, Chapman; the accounts vary) learned that Martinez
was a potter and asked her to produce a pot in the style of a just-excavated, decorated frag-
ment, presumably ancestral to her own community.147 She agreed, with the proviso that she
had not been taught to draw designs on her work. Hewett (or Chapman) then proposed she

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 make the bowl and her husband, who was known to draw, copy the design on the fragment.
This went against San Ildefonso Pueblo traditions (men did not make pottery), but the cou-
ple agreed, and they were paid for their work.148 Hewett and Chapman were so taken with
the results that they began selling the couples productions at a shop in the Museum of New
Mexico, thus setting the stage for pottery making at the San Ildefonso Pueblo, which had
been in decline, to expand and flourish
under the museums auspices.149 "No
race is doomed so long as its culture
lives," Hewett later declared in an article,

"Native American Artists," published in

the Archaeological Institute of Americas
flagship journal, Art and Archaeology
(1922). 150 Keeping Hewett s views in
mind, Henri presented a potter whose
artistry was a lifeline for the Tewa of San
Ildefonso; hence, the inclusion of her

son, to signify the promise of continuity.

Blankets and Indigenous rugs,
which appear in a number of Henri s
Tewa Pueblo portraits, also functioned
to signify communal self-expression.
Trade blankets, manufactured specifi-
cally for Indigenous consumption, had
been a feature of life in the Southwest
since at least the mid-nineteenth cen-

tury. Like traditional handwoven robes,

the blankets expressed the personality
of the wearer and, at the same time,

they signaled the tribal community the

wearer belonged to.151 Worn and dis-
played according to traditional practices,
the blanket asserted cultural difference

over and against American acculturation.

Writing in the early 1930s, Oglala Lakota
Chief Luther Standing Bear described
the wearing of the blanket as "one of the
bravest acts" an Indigenous person could
take, precisely because it was a means of
keeping Indigenous traditions alive in
17 Robert Henri, Tesuque Papoose, 1916, oil on "truth and honesty."152 In this light, and recognizing his admiration for the Pueblo peoples'
canvas, 24 x 20 in. (61 x 51 cm). Eiteljorg Museum
of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis
"communal greatness," we might posit that Henri's frequent inclusion of blankets donned by
(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided his sitters, sometimes accompanied by rugs serving as backdrops, as in Tesuque Papoose (1916,
by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and
Western Art)
Fig. 17) or Indian Girl of San Ildefonso (1917, Fig. 18), was calculated to assert these values.
A third issue to consider is the age of his subjects. Leeds notes that portraits of
Pueblo youths make up the bulk of Henri's output in Santa Fe (additionally, a few sitters
were Mexican Indigenous or Mexican).153 This choice may well be related to anarchist val-
ues, as Henri's involvement in the educational program of the Ferrer Center, which was
founded to establish a libertarian "Modern School" for children, exposed him to an ethos

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 that praised children's openness to new ideas, respected their dignity, critical capacities,
and creative agency, conceived of learning as a cooperative process involving student and
teacher alike, and saw, in youths raised according to these principles, the possibility of radi-
cal social renewal. Ferrer Center co-founder and Modern School instructor Bayard Boyesen,
for example, reasoned that leaving "each pupil free to be his true self" was key to "the har-
monious development of all the faculties
latent in the child."154 The "Prospectus of
the Modern School for the Year 1914-1915,"
published in the centers monthly journal,
the Modern School , goes further.155 State- and

church-adjudicated public education trained

children to "submit to authority" so as to
perpetuate "the present social order with
all its injustice and inequality." Qualities of
"initiative and individuality" were valued
only when they could be harnessed to "the
capitalist machine"; absent that, they were
regarded as a danger to the establishment
and discouraged in public schools.156 The
Modern School, conversely, believed,

The hope for the future lies in the

ability of the rising generation to
think and act independently without
regard to the prejudices of the past,
and it therefore encourages its pupils
to express their individuality in every
direction but never losing sight of
the principle that the liberty of oth-
ers should not be invaded

Modern School has been

by men and women who

that a child educated in a

way, unspoiled by the d

conventionalities of the
be trusted later in life to

against injustice and oppr

18 Robert Henri, Indian Girl of San Ildefonso, 1917, oil An unpublished essay by Goldman, "The Social Im
on canvas, 32 x 26 in. (81.3 x 66 cm). Indianapolis
Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. John N. Carey (artwork
lines the pedagogical method facilitating this type
in the public domain; photograph provided by the choose their own course of study, Goldman state
Indianapolis Museum of Art)

a channel through which the child may attain

of the world as he shows himself ready to receive and assimilate

well evoke, through his own enthusiasm and nobility of characte

asm and nobility of his pupils; but he will overstep the liberties
as he attempts to force the child in any way whatsoever. . . . The

Modern School is to develop the individual through knowledge

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 characteristic traits, so that he may become a social being because he has learned to
know himself, to know his relation to his fellow men, and to realize himself in an har-

monious blending with society.158

This methodology bears comparison with Henri s approach to adult learning. In 1914, Manuel
Komroff, who participated in Henri's Ferrer Center art class, suggested it was "the most ideal
class of our [Modern] School" because, as Henri explained, "the one great thing in the art
class is to establish the idea that each student is his own teacher using the faculties that stu-
dents so doing can learn from each other; from the instructor of natural accident [sic] ."I59 In
other words, the instructor s role was to facilitate student learning, not dictate it; in this spirit,

collaborative learning among students, rather

than competition, was to be encouraged. Anar-
chist pedagogy yielded results. Encouraged by
Henri, wrote Komroff, students had discovered

"their true means of expression," giving rise

to remarkably diverse work that signaled they

were as ungovernable in "art" as they were in

"politics" and "life."160

Elsewhere, Henri argued the art

instructor should learn from students while

encouraging their "individuality of thought

and individuality of expression" to flourish,
so that they might become a "force of stim-
ulating value to the world."161 On this score,
teachers had much to learn from children's

seemingly innocent questions, as they often

raised core issues that merited revisiting:

To answer, to the best of one's ability,

the questions of a child is fine teach-

ing. This is as beneficial to the teacher
as it is to the child. If the question
finds the teacher unprepared he is
stimulated to research on the point
in question. Many of these questions
though apparently trivial are funda-
mental, related to the beginning of
a life. The teacher participates in the
study and becomes a student along
with the child.162

When Henri chose youths as his sub-

19 Robert Henri, Indian Girl of Santa Clara, 1917, oil jects he was depicting a component of humanity that was, to paraphrase "My People," still
on canvas, 32 x 26 in. (81.3 x 66 cm). Phoenix Art
Museum, Museum Purchase, 1968.2 (artwork in the
attuned to life's natural "order" and, hence, infused with "nobility."163 And such was even more
public domain; photograph provided by Phoenix Art the case with his youthful Tewa Pueblo sitters. Tesuque Papoose (1916); Gregorita with the Santa
Museum)
Clara Bowl (1917); Indian Girl of San Ildefonso (1917); and Indian Girl of Santa Clara (1917,
Fig. 19) are suffused with markers of Indigenousness (traditional dress, jewelry, blankets, bowls,
the naming of their Pueblos) because Henri was asserting that their "nobility" was contiguous

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 with a way of life imbued by an "art spirit" antithetical to state power and capitalism.164 There

is little trace of Santa Fe Indian School acculturation (note Henri's comment on "government
school" education and his first Indigenous sitter at La Jolla) in these portraits.
While Henri had free rein to express his politics in paintings, working relations
with Hewett were more problematic. Hewett was sympathetic and knowledgeable regarding
Pueblo peoples, and Henri undoubtedly learned much from the anthropologist. Hewett,
in turn, was ready to adopt aspects of Henri's views, but only up to a point. The limits of
their collaboration can be detected in a remarkable address by Hewett (excerpted below)
at the official opening of the Museum of Fine Arts on Saturday, November 21, 1917. More
than two thousand people were on hand and, after the ceremony, throngs poured into the
exhibition galleries. Fourteen works by Henri are listed (with perfunctory titles) among the
compendium of paintings by forty artists making up the Dedication Exhibit of Southwestern
Art that Henri organized at Hewett's request:165 Indian Girl of Santa Clara ; Indian Girl in
a White Blanket ; Mexican Boy-, Lucinda in White ; Tilly, Indian Girl in Rose Colored Shawl ;
Indian Girl of San Ildefonso', Little Mexican Girl ; Juanita in Blue ;
Indian Girl with Blanket, Santa Fe Marl-, Dieguito ; Mexican Girl ;
and Gregorita.166 Henri was in attendance (Hewett had asked him
to give a speech, but he declined), and honorary speakers included
Senator A. A. Jones, Governor W. E. Lindsey, Secretary of State
Antonio Lucero, and Colonel D. C. Collier.167

In April of that year, President Woodrow Wilson commit-

ted the United States to enter World War I and implemented a
draft, authorized by the Selective Service Act, compelling all men
between the ages of twenty-one and thirty to register for service in
the armed forces.168 The push by officialdom to mobilize Americans
around the war effort was intense, as was the drive to suppress
any trace of dissidence. "Criminal anarchy" laws and the Federal
Espionage Act empowered officials to impose fines of up to $10,000
and imprison for up to twenty years anyone propagating "treason,
insurrection or the obstruction of recruitment or enlistment."169

Compliance was further primed by "slacker" raids to forcibly enlist

anyone without registration papers (Fig. 20). New York-based
radical Randolph Bourne described one such roundup in a letter:
"You have missed the excitement of the draft raids - caged wagons
marked military police' dashing through the streets, filled with
suspects,' cordons of soldiers and sailors around the stations, all the
paraphernalia of a full-fledged military regime already."170
In July 1917 Goldman was arrested and charged with con-
spiracy to prevent draft registration (she would be deported in
December 1919), and the Ferrer Center, where Henri taught his
art classes, became a target of surveillance (the beleaguered center
20 "Scenes in the Great Slacker Hunt," Sun, was forced to close in April 1918). 171 We also find Henri singled out by an undercover agent
September 15, 1918, sec. 3, Pictorial Magazine, 7
(artwork in the public domain)
of the War Department's Military Intelligence Division. In a report dated "Los Angeles, Cal.
Dec 13-17," the agent recorded a conversation with Mrs. Perry McCullough, founder of a Los
Angeles "Anarchist group" in 1914.172 McCullough had spoken enthusiastically about fellow
radical "Robert Henri, a portrait artist in New York City" and a "personal friend of Emma
Goldman."173 Henri was never jailed, but he was clearly a subject of interest. We can gauge
how he negotiated the situation from an unpublished interview (dated September 15, 1917)

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 with "Miss Rose Henderson" of the newspaper Boston Evening Transcript. Asked to speak
on "war and art," Henri responded with a thoroughgoing condemnation of state violence,
authoritarianism, and "civilization" generally. Assuring the Transcript that he was "strongly
pro-ally" while simultaneously lamenting the war s German victims, Henri defended a loving
"comradeship" that transcended nationalist divisions, and his affinity with the Pueblo peoples'
artistic attunement to life, as opposed to violence. The wartime pressures bearing down on
the antipatriotic author of "My People" are palpable:

The millions of dead and maimed, the irreparable ruins are sufficient proof of the
failure in present ideals, of what we have called civilization

us back under a new yoke of institutions. It may be possible t

turning place and that in spite of the raging of this war the b
ilization through violence is a failure

sad for myself as a part of humanity. I feel no exultation in it at

otism. Civilization is sick. I follow the wars progress. I am stro
the papers each day to see how many poor Germans have been
is because I want it to end but I know well that the evil of whic
civilization and cannot be eradicated by the violence of any par
the war? My ideal of a true comrade is one who desires not to i
benefit his enemy. Love is the great creative force. Comradesh
just touching someone else. I may meet and talk with and nev
Broadway and Fifth Avenue. I may find myself akin to an Indi
los. He shows me some pottery, his work, it is beautiful to me
in it and I feel that I know him. War is of the surface. Art is b

does not hate. Art has no propaganda needs, no stimulus of de

Art is the impress of one who passes in full play of his faculties
the impress. It may reveal to us . . . the life which passes. It s the

Note Henri's decoupling of "art" from "propaganda"; the former is th

sion and the "great creative force"; the latter serves the "stimulus" of
One of President Wilson's first acts after declaring war was to establi
the Committee on Public Information, with a special bureau - the Di
licity - mobilizing the visual arts. Headquartered in New York, it hir
designers, illustrators, and cartoonists to blanket the country with n
imagery, posters, billboards, and traveling exhibitions promoting pro
(Fig. 21). 175 Henri likely had this campaign in mind when he made h
1917 Touchstone ran two feature responses to the Society of Independ
Independents Exhibition (April 10- May 6, 1917), one by Henri, the o
president, Glackens, which throws additional light on his thinking.
sition of the draft as ultrademocratic, hence, American, Glackens pr
the nation's thought," would certainly "spring up" from the resulting
21 James Montgomery Flagg, / Want YOU for U.S. Army, trenches."176 Henri, in contrast, proclaimed "absolute freedom" in th
Nearest Recruiting Station, 1917, lithograph,
40 X 29% in. (101.6 x 74.9 cm). Library of Congress,
"Nature" and therefore stood apart from "the present war" and the U
Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division institutions." Art's only political correlate was Russia's unfolding "bl
(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by
the Library of Congress)
(Henri is writing prior to the Bolshevik Party's seizure of power in N
subsequent civil war), which "artists" such as Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky
"awakened" through their writings.177

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 Government repression across the United States was complemented by pro-war civic
celebrations (parades, mobilization rallies, and so on) intended to whip up enthusiasm and
silence dissent, and the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts was no exception. Reviewing
the historical record, we should keep in mind Henri s comments on "war and art" and his
muted presence at the proceedings. As reported in the Museum of New Mexico's newsletter
El Palacio , David R. Boyd, president of the University of New Mexico, gave a stirring oration
that mixed art, God, patriotism, and the war in no uncertain terms. He "invoked the divine
blessing upon the house that had been builded [sic], upon the builders and the donors, upon
the commonwealth and its people, upon the young men fighting the nations battles and the
leader in the White House standing watch in the tower. The audience remained standing and
joined in the singing of America with a fervor that came from the heart."178 Frank Springer,
senator for the Territory of New Mexico and a key ally of Hewetts, reflected on what
Americans could learn, in time of war, from the "Indian": "reverence for the Powers of the

Universe; the value of the spoken word when passed; respect for Age, obedience to Authority,
and devotion to the State - which should make for better citizenship, for more unselfish
patriotism, and for the greater security of our national ideals."179 A rousing rendition of the
"Battle Hymn of the Republic" followed.180 Hewett spoke before the doors opened. Filtering
Henri's prose through a nationalist lens, he praised the exhibiting artists for appreciating "our
people," declaring;

We know of nothing finer than humanity - nothing greater than the spirit of man striv-
ing to be in harmony with the forces around him. That striving unifies life, and makes
it strong and beautiful. We feel that our people here in the southwest do have a life in
keeping with the soil, the skies, winds, clouds, spaces - that they have ordered their lives

in honest, simple harmonious ways. We are glad that the artists understand them.181

Hewett then discoursed, in generalizing terms, on how art communicates "the real life and
spirit of the people" down through the ages, while the monuments of great "dynasties" crum-
ble into dust.182 Finally, he mounted a plea - pitched patriotically - for the United States to
renew itself through art:

We are looking forward to the time when the vast energies that we are now organiz-
ing and dedicating to the defeat of despotic power, may be released and rededicated
to the activities of peace. When that time comes, let us hope that art will be one of
the chief concerns of this great nation

ever it is to be, and we offer to you, tonight, the first fruits of ou

ing of these galleries of southwestern art.183

Hewett was not an anarchist and he makes no mention of the United

advance across the continent before it entered World War I or the idea
institutions and economy, as well as claims to "own" the Pueblo people
were antithetical to the "greater days" Henri envisaged. Rather, he brac
ideal - "the art spirit" - from anarchism in a bid to make it more palat
pro-"America" audience. In contradistinction to the antinationalist the
presented the rosy impression that the paintings by Henri on display
compatible with the notion that the United States at war was a beacon
rededicating itself to that "spirit" after it defeated "despotic power" in
Henri left us no record of what he thought of Hewett 's speech. H
ever, have their own story to tell. They were an expression of empathy

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 critiquing his own culture informed by a web of relational affinities grounded in communal-
ism and an ecological social vision, in which anarchism and Indigeneity gained congruence.
Politically, then, their significance resides in what they communicate concerning Henri's
understanding not only of the Tewa Pueblo peoples (and his later defense of Pueblo cultural
practices, communal lands, and water rights when threatened by Congress's "Bursum bill")184
but also of the transformation he sought to nurture among non-Indigenous Americans.
Contemporary Kwakwaka'wakw theorist Gord Hill has argued that overcoming
subjugation necessitates Indigenous peoples to resist the socioeconomic system on which
"control and exploitation are based." Additionally, since their relation to the land is inte-
gral to renewing their cultures and modes of self-governance, reasserting sovereignty over
traditional territories is imperative, and with it, "the radical de-centralization of national
power (i.e., the dismantling of the nation-State)." This, he concludes, is the true meaning of
"decolonization."185 The anarchist-communism of Henri's milieu, which sought to abolish
capitalism and dissolve the institution of the state in favor of decentralized, self-governing,
ecologically attuned communities, prefigures, latent in itself, a parallel process of decolo-
nization among non-Indigenous Americans, who might become accomplices in a shared
undertaking. Sensitized to the United States government's repression of Indigenous peoples
and the multifaceted nature of Indigenous resistance, Henri discovered, in New Mexico, an
anarchist-inflected affinity with the Pueblo peoples' way of life, autonomous from the United
States' polity, its capitalist economy, and its hegemonic, violence-saturated society. This sets
him apart from Marsden Hartley and other period modernists who, in the early 1920s, sub-
sumed the artistry of the region's Indigenous peoples into nationalist narratives positing the
future emergence of a distinctly "American" art devoid of European influence, minus any
radical transformation of political, economic, and social institutions.186 If, in 1920, Hartley
was calling on Americans to draw on "redman [sic] esthetics to establish ourselves firmly with
an esthetic consciousness of our own,"187 Henri could reply, "I have none of that cruel, fearful
possession known as patriotism; no blind, intense devotion for an institution that has stiff-
ened in chains of its own making. My love of mankind is individual, not national."188

ALLAN ANTLIFF has authored Joseph Beuys (2014); Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin
Wall (2007); and Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde (2001). He is art editor of the
interdisciplinary journal Anarchist Studies [Department of Art History and Visual Studies, PO Box 1700, University of
Victoria, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada, allan@uvic.ca].

NOTES University of Texas Press, 1995); J. J. Brody, Pueblo

Indian Painting: Tradition and Modernism in New
This article is dedicated to the memory of Mexico,
Jeffrey 1900-1950 (Santa Fe, NM: School of America
Rubinoff.
Research Press, 1997); Elizabeth Hutchinson,
Its completion was supported by a visiting research fel- The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and
lowship at the Edith O'Donnell Institute of Art History, Transculturation in American Art, 1890-1915 (Durham,
University of Texas at Dallas, and a travel grant from NC: Duke University Press, 2009); and Bill Anthes,
the University of Victoria. I am grateful to Merry Scully Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940-1960
(head of Curatorial Affairs) and Joseph Traugott (Curator (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
of 20th Century Art), New Mexico Museum of Art,
3. David W. Penney and Lisa A. Roberts, "Pueblo Painters
for assistance while consulting collections and archival
in the Border Zone," in Native American Art in the
holdings related to Henri's activities in Santa Fe. Thanks
Twentieth Century, ed. W. Jackson Rushing (London:
also to Robyn Rosiak, the anonymous reviewers for The
Routledge, 1999), 29.
Art Bulletin, and Editor-in-Chief Nina Athanassoglou-
Kallmyer for their helpful comments and suggestions. 4. I will not be using the terms "Indian" or "Native

i. Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What It Really Stands American," both of which were coined by colonizing

For," in Anarchism and Other Essays (New York: Mother Europeans.

Earth Publishing, 1910), 64. 5. Valerie Ann Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe: His Work

2. See for example W. Jackson Rushing, Native and Influence (Santa Fe, NM: Gerald Peters Gallery,
American Art and the New York Avant-Garde (Austin: 1998), 36.

129 ROBERT HENRI S PORTRAITS OF THE TEWA PUEBLO PEOPLES

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6. For example, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Francisco Ferrer School. Yes. Miss Goldman remained for 39. Robert Henri, "My People," Craftsman, no. 27
Arts traveling exhibition World War I and American Art almost an hour and a half talking." See Goldman, Living (February 1915): 462.
(November 4, 2016-April 9, 2017) featured none of My Life, 2:528-29 (Goldman on Henri); and Antliff,
40. Susan Vure, "After the Armory: Robert Henri,
Henri's paintings. See Robert Cozzolino, Anne Classen Anarchist Modernism, 27.
Individualism and American Modernisms," in The
Knutson, and David M. Lubin, eds., World War I and
21. Modern School and Francisco Ferrer Association Eight and American Modernisms, ed. Elizabeth Kennedy
American Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
stationery lists Henri on the advisory board. See Manuel(Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2009), 60.
2016), 299-305 (checklist).
Komroff to Robert Henri, March 1, 1915, Robert Henri
41. Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle, 194.
7. Allan Antliff, Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and Papers, box 5, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts
the First American Avant-Garde (Chicago: University of Library, Yale University (hereafter Henri Papers, 42. While Henri and Organ were listening to a vehemently
Chicago Press, 2001), 12-13. Beinecke). antiwar speech, "Strike against War," by Helen Keller in
early 1916, Organ's loud hissing (in concert with a mass of
8. Rebecca Zurier, Picturing the City : Urban Vision and the 22. Their names appear in the beginning of the transcript
pro-war agitators) grew so disruptive that Henri "forced"
Ashcan School (Berkeley: University of California Press, of the trial proceedings published in Mother Earth. See
her to leave with him. See John Loughery, John Sloan:
2006), 107-8. "EMMA GOLDMAN BEFORE THE BAR: THE
Painter and Rebel (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 236.
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK against
9. Robert Henri, "Progress in Our National Art Must
Emma Goldman, April 20, 1916," Mother Earth 43.
6,Robert
no. 3Henri, "An Appreciation by an Artist," Mother
Spring from the Development of Individuality of Ideas
(1916): 496. Earth 10, no. 1 (1915): 415.
and Freedom of Expression: A Suggestion for a New
Art School," Craftsman 4 (January 1909): 387-401. 23. Goldman belonged to the International Walt 44. Ibid.
Henri, who was fluent in French, resided in Paris, Whitman Fellowship; "Dinner of Whitman Fellows,"
45. Henri's antiwar opinions are discussed in Perlman,
arguably the continental epicenter of the movement, Sun, Thursday, June 1, 1905, 2. On Henri and Whitman,
Robert Henri: His Life and Art, 124. On the reprint of "My
over three extended periods: from 1888 to 1891; in see Ruth. L. Bohan, "Robert Henri, Walt Whitman, and
People," see Antliff, Anarchist Modernism, 151.
1895; and from 1898 to 1900. On Henri's residencies in the American Artist," Walt Whitman Quarterly 29, no. 4
Paris, see "Robert Henri, Chronology," in John Sloan/ (2012): 131-51. 46. Editorial introduction to Henri, "My People," 450.
Robert Henri: Their Philadelphia Years, 1886-1904 , ed.
24. Zurier, Picturing the City, 117-18. See also Joseph J. 47. Cartwright, "Robert Henri: Faces of California," 18.
Deborah Allen (Philadelphia: Moore College of Art,
Kwiat, "Robert Henri and the Emerson-Whitman
1976), 59-60. 48. Robert Henri to Henry Lovins, July 1914, Edgar L.
Tradition," PMLA, no. 71 (1956): 617-36.
Hewett Papers, Fray Angelico Chavez History Library and
10. Derrick R. Cartwright, "Robert Henri: Faces of
25. Goldman, "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For," 58. Photo Archives, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.
California," in Robert Henri's California: Realism, Race, and
Region, 1914-1929, by Cartwright and Valerie Ann Leeds 49. See Richard Carriço, Strangers in a Stolen Land:
26. Bennard B. Perlman, Robert Henri: His Life and Art
(Laguna Beach, CA: Laguna Art Museum, 2014), 34n8. (New York: Dover, 1991), 118. Indians of San Diego Country from Prehistory to the New
Deal (San Diego, CA: Sunbelt Publications, 2008); and
ii. Helen Farr Sloan, "John Sloan Discussing Robert Henri
27. Ibid., 138.
Benjamin Madley, American Genocide: The United States
(Notes Taken 1949/1951)," in Allen, John Sloan/Robert Henri,
28. Goldman, Living My Life, 2:529. and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1871 (New
31. See also "John Sloan Chronology," in ibid., 49-53. Sloan
Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
would later become active in the American Socialist Party
29. "E. Goldman - Lecture Art and Revolution,"' Henri
in 1910 and ran twice as a Socialist Party candidate for the 50. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 8-9; on the Tewa
Diary, Sunday, November 12, 1911, microfilm roll 886,
New York State legislature. identity of his sitters, see Rushing, Native American Art
frame 578.
12. William Innes Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle and the New York Avant-Garde, 59.
30. Emma Goldman, "Nation Seethes in Social Unrest -
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), 78. See also 51. Robert Henri to his mother, Theresa Gatewood
Goldman," Denver Post, April 26, 1912, sec. 1, 11.
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (New York: Freeport Lee, July 27, 1914, Henri Papers, Beinecke, quoted in
Press, 1971). 31. Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (Montreal: Black Rose Cartwright, "Robert Henri: Faces of California," 23.
Books, 1988); and John Clark and Camille Martin,
13. Linda Jones Gibbs, "Robert Henri and the 52. Ibid., quoted in Cartwright, "Robert Henri: Faces of
eds., Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: The Radical Social
Cosmopolitan Culture of Fin-de-Siècle France" (PhD California," 22.
Thought of Elisée Reclus (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
diss., City University of New York, 1999), 201-30.
2004), 3-113. On contemporary anarchism, see Andy 53. Ibid.
14. Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art Ì (New York: Funk and Price, "Social Ecology," in The Continuum Companion to
Wagnalls, 1906), 118-19, 120-23. Anarchism, ed. Ruth Kinna (London: Continuum Books, 54. Troy R. Johnson, "Wounded Knee Massacre (1890),"

2012), 223-47. Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law, ed.
15. Zurier, Picturing the City, 117.
Paul Finkelman and Tim Alan Garrison (Washington,
1 6. Antliff, Anarchist Modernism, 26. 32. Robyn Rosiak, Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism in DC: CQ Press, 2009), 878-79.
Fin-de-siècle France: Painting, Politics, and Landscape
17. Ibid., 18-20. 55. Jerry Green, "The Medals of Wounded Knee,"
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 20.
Nebraska History, no. 75 (1994): 203.
18. "Toledo," entry in Robert Henri diary, Sunday,
33. Elisée Reclus, "The Feeling for Nature in Modern
January 29, 1911, Robert Henri Papers, microfilm roll 56. "Red Cloud's Speech after Wounded Knee," CommonLit,
Society" (1866), in Clark and Martin, Anarchy, Geography,
886, frame 480, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian accessed May 14, 2017, https://www.commonlit.org/texts/red-
Modernity, 125-26.
Institution, Washington, DC. "Emma Goldman," entry cloud-s-speech-after-wounded-knee.

in Henri diary, Monday, January 30, 1911, microfilm roll 34. Rosiak, Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism, 5.
57. "Robert Henri: Journal of Student Days, January 23,
886, frame 481.
35. Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, comp. Margery A. 1890," from Violet Organ, Series II: Writings by Others,
19. Henri introduced himself in September or early Ryerson (New York: Icon Editions, 1984), 60. p. 102, Henri Papers, box 23, folder 551, Beinecke. The
October. See Emma Goldman, Living My Life, 2 vols. Wounded Knee massacre took place on December 29,
36. Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle, 184.
(New York: Dover, 1970), 2:528. 1890, and Red Cloud's speech was made shortly afterward,
37. Ibid., 172 (Henri School of Art), 186 (Bellows). leading me to date Henri's comments to January 23, 1891.
20. Henri's diary entry for Monday, October 30, 1911
(microfilm roll 886, frame 573), records: "Emma Goldman 38. Ibid., 186-87. 58. Alex Nemerov, "Doing the Old America: The Image
called to ask me to give some evening instruction at of the American West, 1880-1920," in The West as America:

130 The Art Bulletin September 2018

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Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier , ed. William H. 81. Goldman makes a similar case in "Minorities versus Life (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press,
Truettner (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Majorities," in Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, 2004), 77-86.
Press, 1991), 285-343. On Henri's determination to avoid 75-84.
109. Edna Robertson and Sarah Nestor, Artists of the
such stereotypes, see Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe ,
82. Henri, "My People," 460-61. Canyons and Caminos: Santa Fe, the Early Years (New
9; and Rushing, Native American Art and the New York
York: Peregrine Smith, 1976), 58.
Avant-Garde , 62. 83. Ibid., 467.
no. Valerie Ann Leeds, "Robert Henri and the American
59. Robert Henri to Edgar L. Hewett, n.d., Alice Klauber 84. Voltairine de Cleyre, "Anarchism and American
Southwest: His Work and Influence" (PhD diss., City
Collection, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA. Traditions," in Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's
University of New York, 2000), 248.
Henri is referring to his forthcoming Macbeth Gallery "Mother Earth, " ed. Peter Glassgold (New York:
exhibition, Recent Paintings by Robert Henri (November Counterpoint, 2001), 29-41. iii. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 15; and idem, "Robert
17-December 17, 1914). Henri and the American Southwest," 178.
85. Ibid., 30-31.
60. Rushing, Native American Art and the New York 112. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 24.
86. Ibid., 34. Regarding the "imaginary community" of
Avant-Garde , 59.
the nation-state, see Anita Loomba, Colonialism/Post- 113. Leeds, "Robert Henri and the American Southwest," 172.
61. Robert Henri, entry, Artists Record Book, collection Colonialism (London: Routledge, 2002), 186-98.
114. Rushing, Native American Art and the New York
of Janet Le Clair, quoted in Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa
87. De Cleyre, "Anarchism and American Traditions," 41. Avant-Garde, 62.
Fe, 9.

88. Henri, "My People," 461. 115. Nemerov, "Doing the Old America," 311-16.
62. Rodger D. McGrath, Gunfighters, Highway Men,
and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier (San Francisco: 89. Robert Henri to Helen Niles, February 14, 191 5, Henri 116. Robert Henri to Dr. Edgar L. Hewett, November
University of California Press, 1987), passim. Papers, box 7, Beinecke, emphasis in the original. 23, 1916, quoted in Rushing, Native American Art and the
New York Avant-Garde, 60. The portraits were "lacking
63. 1 am citing the time line of the Bishop Paiute peoples, 90. Henri, "My People," 460.
context" according to critics; Rushing, Native American
at Bishop Paiute Tribe, accessed March 13, 2017, http://
Art and the New York Avant-Garde, 62.
91. Eastman (Ohiyesa), "'My People,"' 179.
www. bishoppaiutetribe. com/ .

92. Ibid. 117. Rushing, Native American Art and the New York
64. Robert Henri to Alice Klauber, March 11, 1914, Alice
Avant-Garde, 62.
Klauber Collection, quoted in Cartwright, "Robert Henri: 93. Arrell Morgan Gibson, The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies:
Faces of California," 34-3 5n23. Age of the Muses, 1900- 1942 (Norman: University of 118. Henri, "My People," 450.

65. Robert Henri to William Glackens, October 24, 1914, Oklahoma Press, 1983), 40; and Rushing, Native American 119. Ibid., 468.
Art and the New York Avant-Garde, 59.
Henri Papers, box 4, Beinecke.
120. Mother Earth regularly published news on the PLM.
66. Robert Henri to Helen Niles, September 8, 1914, 94. Nancy Owen and Lay Leigh Hagan, A Peculiar See for example "Manifesto of the Mexican Revolution,"
Henri Papers, box 7, Beinecke. Alchemy: A Centennial History of SAR, 1907-2007 (Santa Mother Earth 7, no. 1 (1912): 15-23.
Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 22.
67. Vure, "After the Armory," 60. 121. See Valerie Ann Leeds, "Far and Wide: The Travels
95. Ibid. and Art of Robert Henri," in Cartwright and Leeds,
68. Robert Henri, "An Ideal Exhibition Scheme: The
96. Jean Stern, "Robert Henri and the 1915 San Diego Robert Henri's California, 86n22.
Official One, a Failure," Arts and Decoration 5, no. 2
(1914): 49-52, 76. The painting fills half the page and is Exposition," American Art Review 11 (September-October 122. James A. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands:
positioned above the title of the article. 1975): 108. Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 190 4-192 3 (Norman:

97. Ibid., 109. University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 81.

69. "Robert Henri's Plea for Ideal Art Exhibitions,"
Modern School 2, no. 1 (1915): 10-11. 123. Ibid., 27.
98. Ibid., 115.

70. Charles E. Eastman (Ohiyesa), '"My People': The 124. Sandos (ibid., 27, 29, 60-61, 138-40) documents
99. Gibson, The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies, 41.
Indians' Contribution to the Art of America," Craftsman numerous links between Mother Earth and Regeneración.
27 (November 1914): 179-86. 100. Ibid. On Hewett's San Diego residency, see Beatrice On the Ferrer Center, see Paul Avrich, The Modern
Chauvenet, Hewett and Friends: A Biography of Santa Fes School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United
71. Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants against the State: Yiddish Vibrant Era (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980),
and Italian Anarchism in America (Urbana: University of
1983), 102, 108. On Chapman, see Owen and Hagan, A 90, 132.
Illinois Press, 2016), 133-35.
Peculiar Alchemy, ij.
125. Voltairine de Cleyre, "The Mexican Revolution," in
72. Pietro Gori, "Stornelli d'esilio" ("Songs of Exile"),
101. Gibson, The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies, 42. Glassgold, Anarchy !, 318-32.
quoted in ibid., in.
102. Chauvenet, Hewett and Friends, 122. 126. Ibid., 321.
73. Ibid., 112.
103. Ibid., 123. 127. Ibid., 321-22. Compare de Cleyre's analysis with
74. Henri, "My People," 461. See also Emma Goldman,
Ricardo Flores Magón, "The Mexican People Are Suited
"Patriotism: A Menace to Society," in Goldman, 104. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 10-11.
to Communism," Regeneración , December 2, 1911,
Anarchism and Other Essays , 134-35.
105. Edgar L. Hewett to Robert Henri, July 13, 1916, Edgar reprinted in Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magón
75. Henri, "My People," 460. L. Hewett Papers, box 2, folder 10. Reader, ed. Chaz Bufe and Mitchell Cowen Verter (San
Francisco: AK Press, 2005), 176-77.
76. Ibid. 106. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 12.

128. De Cleyre, "The Mexican Revolution," 322.

77. Ibid. See also Goldman, "Patriotism: A Menace to 107. The Tiwa are a distinct linguistic group. See Joe S.
Society," 136. Sando, Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian 129. Ibid., 323.
History (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1998), 8.
78. Henri, "My People," 460. 130. Ibid., 323-24.
108. Homer, Robert Henri and His Circle, 203. For a
79. Ibid. 131. Ibid.
discussion ofTewa ceremonies, see Jill D. Sweet,
80. Ibid. Dances of the Tewa Pueblo Indians: Expressions of New 132. Ibid., 339.

131 ROBERT HENRI 'S PORTRAITS OF THE TEWA PUEBLO PEOPLES

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133- Robert Henri, "Letter from New Mexico," in The Art 158. Emma Goldman, "The Social Importance of the 184. Introduced by New Mexico senator Holm O.
Spirit , 187-89. Modern School" (ca. 1911), in Red Emma Speaks: An Bursum in 1922, the congressional bill has been rightly
Emma Goldman Reader, ed. Alix Kates Shulman (New described as a thinly disguised land grab. The Pueblos
134. Ibid., 187.
York: Schocken Books, 1983), 144-45. of New Mexico responded with a manifesto, "Appeal
135. Ibid., 188. for Fair Play and the Preservation of Pueblo Life"
159. Manuel Komroff, "Our Art Class," Modern School 1,
(November 5, 1922), declaring: "The Pueblo, as is well
136. Ibid., 188-89. no. 7 (1914): 5-6. Komroff is citing a letter from Henri.
known, existed in a civilized way before the white man
137. Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (Carina, Italy: 160. Ibid., 5. came to America. We have kept our old customs and
Elephant Editions, 1985), 118, emphasis in the original. lived in harmony with each other and with our fellow
161. Henri, The Art Spirit, 224-25.
138. Ibid., 119-20. Americans. This bill will destroy our common life and
162. Ibid., 169-70. will rob us of everything that we hold dear, our lands,
139. Andy Garcia of the San Juan Pueblo relates, "The dances our customs, our traditions." Henri lent his name to an
163. Henri, "My People," 460.
. . . have a deep religious meaning. Most honor different crea-
"Artists and Writers against the Bursum Bill" broadside
tures such as the buffalo, the dog, deer, antelope, elk, eagle, 164. Ibid.
drawn up by the Taos Society of Artists. These and other
hawk, and the turde. Other dances pay respect to corn, clouds,
165. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 25. efforts helped ensure the bill's defeat in 1923. See Anthes,
trees - all of nature. Pueblos do not think of themselves as
Native Moderns, 10-11; and "Appeal for Fair Play and the
separate from nature or superior to other creatures." Garcia, 166. "Pictures in Art Exhibit," El Palacio 4, no. 4 (1917): 95.
Preservation of Pueblo Life," reprinted in F. E. Hoxie,
quoted in Sweet, Dances of the Tewa Pueblo Indians, 91.
167. Robertson and Nestor, Artists of the Canyons and ed., Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the

140. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 23. Caminos, 56, 58. On Henri's decision, see Perlman, Robert Progressive Era (Boston: Bedford/Saint Martin's Press,
Henri: His Life and Art, 126. 2000), 173-74.
141. Leeds, "Robert Henri and the American Southwest," 239.
168. "An Act to authorize the President to increase tem- 185. Gord Hill, Colonization and Decolonization: A
142. Brody, Pueblo Indian Painting, 90.
porarily the Military Establishment of the United States," Manual for Indigenous Liberation in the 21st Century
143. Leeds, "Robert Henri and the American Southwest," 239. Sixty-Fifth Congress, Sess. 1, Chapter 15, 1917, 76-83. (Vancouver: Warrior Publications, 2006), 20.

144. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 21. 169. Antliff, Anarchist Modernism, 197-98. 186. On Hartley's views as exemplary, see Penney
and Roberts, "Pueblo Painters in the Border Zone,"
145. Joe S. Sando, Pueblo Profiles: Cultural Identity 170. Randolph Bourne to Elsie Clews Parsons, September
31, 35-36; and Leah Dinworth, Imagining Indians in
through Centuries of Change (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light 12, 1918, Elsie Clews Parsons Papers, box 1, folder 3,
the Southwest: Persistent Visions of a Primitive Past
Publishers, 1998), 1 77, 180. Philadelphia Philosophical Society.
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996),
146. Over the course of her marriage to Julian Martinez 171. Antliff, Anarchist Modernism, 198. 175-83.
(also from the San Ildefonso Pueblo) the couple had four
172. Mrs. Perry McCullough, "Los Angeles Impressions," 187. Marsden Hartley, "Red Man Ceremonials: An
boys: Adam (1903), John (1915), Popovi Da (1922), and
Mother Earth 9, no. 6 (1914): 203-4. American Plea for American Esthetics," Art and
Philip (1922). See Richard L. Spevik, "Chronology," in
Archaeology 9 (January 1920): 14.
The Legacy of Maria Povaka Martinez (Santa Fe, NM: 173. Respy, "Los Angeles, Cal. Dec 13-17," in United States
Museum of New Mexico Press, 2003), 202-3. 188. Henri, "My People," 450.
Military Intelligence Reports: Surveillance of Radicals in

147. Owen and Hagan, A Peculiar Alchemy, 32 (Hewett as the United States, 1917-1941 (Frederick, MD: University

protagonist); and Sando, Pueblo Profiles, 180 (Chapman Publications of America, 1984), microfilm reel 8, n.p.

as protagonist).
174. Robert Henri, "War & Art, Reconstructed Interview

148. Owen and Hagan, A Peculiar Alchemy, 32 (payment); with Miss Rose Henderson," September 15, 1917, Henri
and Sando, Pueblo Profiles, 180 (violation of tradition). Papers, box 1, Beinecke.

149. During the 1920s, two-thirds of San Ildefonso Pueblo 175. George Creel, How We Advertised America: The First Telling
households included at least one woman engaged in making of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information

pottery. See Owen and Hagan, A Peculiar Alchemy, 32-33. That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the

Globe (New York: Harper Brothers, 1920), 133-47.

150. Edgar L. Hewett, "Native American Artists," Art and
Archaeology 13, no. 3 (1922): 109. 176. "The Biggest Art Exhibition in America, and,
Incidentally, War, Discussed by W. J. Glackens, President
151. Charles J. Lohrmann, "The Language of the Robe,"
of the Society of Independent Artists," Touchstone, 1, no. 2
in Language of the Robe, by Robert W. Kapoun with
(1917): 164-65.
Lohrmann (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1992), 7-19.

177. Robert Henri, "The 'Big Exhibition,' the Artist and

152. Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle (1933),
the Public," Touchstone 1, no. 2 (1917): 174.
excerpt, reprinted in Kapoun and Lohrmann, Language of
the Robe, 5-6. 178. "When Dreams Come True," El Palacio 4, no. 4
(1917): 90.
153. Leeds, Robert Henri in Santa Fe, 14.

179. "Dedication Address by Hon. Frank Springer," El

154. Bayard Boyesen, Prospectus of the Francisco Ferrer
Palacio 4, no. 4 (1917): 16.
Association of New York (New York: Francisco Ferrer
Association, 1911), 1-2, quoted in Avrich, The Modern 180. "When Dreams Come True," 90.
School Movement, 73.
181. "Address by Dr. Edgar L. Hewett at the Opening of
155. "Prospectus of the Modern School for the Year 1914- the New Museum at Santa Fe, November 24, 1917," El
1915," Modern School 1, no. 9 (1914): 1-2. Palacio 4, no. 4 (1917): 74.

156. Ibid., i. 182. Ibid.

157. Ibid., 1-2.

183. Ibid., 75.

132 The Art Bulletin September 2018

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