A photograph of NYC and Cuba? 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., 20 1/4 x 16 1/4 in. (framed). Kenyon, born in Centerville, Rhode Island on 29 March 1861, never sought self-promotion, therefore he was overshadowed by his contemporaries. The son of Quakers, Charles Dake Kenyon and Mary Rodman, Henry began studying at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1879. Three years later we find him under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger at the Académie Julian. He remained a student through the 1880s. Toward the middle of the decade, Kenyon met Arthur Wesley Dow, who would influence him considerably. The two traveled to Pont-Aven in Brittany in 1885, one year after Arthur Hoeber and Willard Metcalf made their visit. Hoeber (1895) recalled the period around that time when Alexander and Birge Harrison, Eugene Vail, Walter Gay, and others were in the picturesque village. A year later (1886), Gauguin entered the scene and changed the direction of the artists' colony. After exhibiting his works in Providence and selling over thirty, Kenyon returned to Brittany that fall, to visit Dow and to paint in Concarneau, where Alexander Harrison worked. From that year comes Kenyon's Breton Landscape (Private collection), a small, broadly painted panorama, what one might even call an oil sketch. Kenyon stopped to see the Paris Salon on his way back to America and nearly perished after the sinking of his steamer off the English coast. Unperturbed, Kenyon was back in Pont-Aven with Dow and the latter's fiancée (May-July 1888). Dow and Kenyon rented a studio in Paris where they would finish the school term. Kenyon exhibited A Foggy Morning, Venice (lost) in the Salon of 1889, his only Paris Salon showing.Kenyon joined Dow at Ipswich, where an artists' colony would soon develop. Dow was about to make an indelible stamp on the area's cultural activity and to launch his own career as a painter, craftsman, and influential teacher. He had already helped to found the Ipswich Historical Society that April, and within a year, his Ipswich Summer School would be in operation. During the 1890s, Kenyon relaxed his brushwork even further and he employed broken color but his palette was often lower in key than most of the impressionists'. Kenyon returned to Europe in 1897 — this time to Etaples and Holland. He returned to Holland and traveled throughout Europe with his bride Caroline A. Savary (1864-1943), a pastel portraitist, on an extended honeymoon (1899-1900).The couple returned to live at Ipswich. Unlike Dow, Kenyon did not participate in community affairs. He preferred to wander off to secluded spots with his sketchbook, paints, and small canvas panels. Later Kenyon discovered Ogunquit, Maine. One of his most impressive works, River Shed with Lobster Traps, is fully impressionistic. It shows a bold but controlled use of color, a sophisticated composition, a variety of brushwork from the expressive rendering of reeds in the left foreground to the shingle strokes of the buildings, to the masterful broken color in the reflections. Kenyon died in New Orleans, on 16 January 1926.Sources:Moffatt, Frederick C., Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,1977, pp. 27, 29, 31, 32, 36, 38, 40-42; Sellin, David, Americans in Brittany and Normandy 1860-1910. Phoenix, AZ: Phoenix Art Museum,1982, pp. 41, 53-54, 162; Van Liere, Eldon N. and Julia L. Muney, Henry Rodman Kenyon 1861-1926. Exh. cat. Muncie, IN: Ball State University Art Gallery, 1987; Lesage, Jean-Claude, Peintres Américains en Pas-de-Calais: La colonie d'Étaples. Saint-Josse-sur-Mer: A. M. M. E. Editions, 2007, p. 201.Submitted by Richard H. Love and Michael Preston Worley, Ph.D.

As pictured