"We must get rid of the talking painters - those who talk but do not paint, who teach in our art schools, and replace them with practicing painters who have proved by their work that they have something to teach."
"You can't teach art, you can only teach the language."
According to Ellis Island and the Chicago Art Insitute's records, Henry Hensche was born February 25,1899 in Germany, He came to the United States by way of Antwerp, Belgium and arrived March 3, 1909 at Ellis Island aboard the S.S. Kroonland, along with his sister Erna, and his father Fred. Henry was 10 years old. His mother died before he was two.
As a painter and teacher of consummate skill, Hensche is considered by many in the art world to be unparalleled as a fine color visualist in the "art of seeing and painting". He has been called an iconoclast, a pioneer, and the late Grand Central Art Galleries of New York named him, "L'Enfant Terrible of Academie". He is known for teaching his students how to "key" a painting.
Between 1922 and 1930 Hensche won the Pulitzer Traveling Prize from Columbia University and the Halgarten Award from the National Academy of Design. He has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Corcoran, The Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and has had many other one-man-shows. He is known for his commissioned portraits of notables, one being Mr. & Mrs. Skelly of Skelly Oil. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art. Some of his students who have gone on to become successful painters are; William Draper, Charlie Miller and Nelson Shanks. They will tell you that they are happy to have studied with a painter's painter.
When Henry Hensche was seventeen, he worked in the stock yards to earn the money that would send him to the Art Institute of Chicago. There he studied with tonalist George Bellows. Hensche later attended the National Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Student's League of New York, the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, and Charles Webster Hawthorne's Cape Cod School of Art. It was there in Provincetown, Massachusetts where Hensche had found his niche and calling.
Just as Charles Webster Hawthorne became assistant instructor to William Merritt Chase, Henry Hensche became assistant instructor to Charles Hawthorne do to his comprehension of Hawthorne's approach which was not well known or understood by other students. It happened to be right at the time when Hawthorne was intently involved in the study of Claude Monet and his application of color according to differnet light, such as Monet's series paintings. "Hawthorne, nevertheless did not always implement in his commissioned paintings the knowledge he had gained from studying Claude Monet" - many of Hawthorne's later works began to show his development in color. The last fifteen years of Hawthorne's life was dedicated to understanding what Claude Monet was doing in practice with the new color pigments. Henry Hensche was instrumental in taking Hawthorne's approach, "mudheads", a step further to the "color block studies", which although simple in shape, are quite effective in developing the painter's basic visual ability.
Many of Hawthorne's students later became successful and known for their work. Hawthorne was a very good teacher, and so was Hensche. It was the private studies and consultations with Hawthorne as his teaching assistant, that imparted Hawthorne's often misunderstood approach (see Hawthorne on Painting, Dover Publications) to Hensche and earned him the rightful position as sucessor to Hawthorne. Hawthorne once told Hensche to, "take the pigment right from the tube and place it on the canvas if you have to." It was to obtain the intensity and radiance of color that exists in nature. Hensche would say,"you can not copy nature, you can only make an educated interpretation of it based on your vocabulary of color relationships and comprehension". Others who never knew better, were more concerned with Hawthorne's medium and thought that it may have been the answer to the radiant color combinations that Hawthorne was achieving.
The human eye can not see unless there is light on the subject it is studying. Hensche started students with sun light key, gray day key, north light key, and as one progressed, then to late afternoon light key and early morning light key and finally to the season and time of day. It is the study of the color blocks under differnt light conditions that give a simple reference yet continually challenge the painter's ability to see the light key and to record it accurately and effectively.
Hensche devoted most of his life to this cause of developing a method of study, whereby a student painter could grow visually in the understanding of color masses. He was hardly concerned with promoting his paintings and often disliked gallery policies. He was also known to give away demonstrations or charge very little for them. He was concerned that beautiful works by the masters should not be in private collections but in public where students could study them. Even though many of the methods used at that time are now antiquated, he felt that students still needed to know the brilliancy with which the old masters worked. They had limited choices in pigments and therefore their color vocabulary on canvas was dated. Hensche would say, "color is a language. Just like the poet, it is not the words or the colors, but what you say or do with them." Obtainning the subtleness, intensity and radiance of color that exists in nature is an analytical task that requires much concentration in order to aquire a realistic interpretation.
After Hawthorne's death in 1930, the ideas of Hawthorne's principal approach had already been taught by Henry. Although a new idea, the approach proved to be efficacious in Hensche's painting. As his teaching grew, so did his popularity and he soon became a guest speaker and lecturer, who came to be in demand at many colleges. Often well-liked by the student body but misunderstood by the faculty, he was adamant about his teaching methods. Mrs. Hawthorne wanted to sell the rights to the name of the Cape Cod School of Art to Henry but he refused to buy them. From 1932 to 1935 Henry pretty much taught with no name to his school. Then in the summer of 1935, he began using the name, The Cape School of Art and continued teaching in the fine Hawthorne tradition. He carried on the intense study of color, each summer. The schools of Hawthorne and Hensche were only open summers because the winters were too harsh for painting outdoors. In 1974 Hensche began teaching during the winter months at Studio One in Gray, Louisiana and later moved there for good. He continued painting and teaching in Louisiana until 1991. Henry Hensche died December 10, 1992 from Parkinsonism.
