[Illustration: PLATE II.--RECLINING NYMPH
In accordance with Henner's favourite formula, the dazzling whiteness of the nymph's body acquires an astonishing relief through contrast with the sombre verdure, yet even the very shadows are penetrated by a warm and vibrant light.]
For Henner was, above all else, a painter of women. "It was in the female form that he sought and found perfect Beauty, complete, indisputable, and undisputed, a victorious, compelling Beauty that silences all criticism, all indecision by its multifold splendour, the infinite variety of its complex forms, a Beauty embodied in contrast, harmony, charm, freshness, and grace, but with no element of the merely pretty or fantastic." Henner's women are without affectation, or morbidness, or coquetry, or pretence. They are tall, strong, supple, stately, superb, like the antique type itself. Their beauty is without a flaw. Their flesh is steeped in light, their hair a tissue of living radiance. Such is the clue to their irresistible seductiveness.
It has been said of Henner that he was the painter of blondes. He was more especially the painter of the red-blonde type, for the reason that light, falling upon the ruddy glint of their tresses, awakens flame-like reflections and emphasizes the satiny grain of their skin. This tawny, golden sheen is the most alive, the most vibrant, yet the most unobtrusive of all, and consequently the most harmonious and the most beautiful. But Henner also painted brunettes with an incomparable mastery; to be convinced of this, one needs only to refer to any of the innumerable portraits of dark-haired women that have come from his brush, notably those of Mme. Noetzlin, of Mme. Duchesne-Fournes, of the Comtesse de Jacquemont, and that of Mme. Karakehia which produced such a marked sensation in the Salon of 1876.
While adhering to his own strongly personal manner, Henner nevertheless experimented in the most diverse types of painting, as we shall see in the course of the present study, and he was excellent in all of them, because he brought to them all those masterly qualities which make the greatness of a painter: impeccable line-work, a powerful command of colour, and a perfect knowledge of his art acquired through the constant pursuit of beauty and of truth.