Featured Artist in Collection

The sixth and last child of Alsatian peasants, Jean-Jacques Henner became an extremely successful portraitist and painter of female nudes in Second Empire and Third Republic Paris. His oeuvre included religious pictures, landscapes, and still-lifes as well. He was heavily influenced by the Tenebrism style of Caravaggio, and the French painter Prud’hon. Debuting at the Salon in 1863 with Young Bather Asleep (1862, Musee Unterlinden, Colmar) and two portraits, Henner won a third-class medal. He exhibited regularly for the next forty years and eventually won almost every award then available. In 1903, two years before his death, Henner was named Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor.