E. Martin Hennings

E. Martin Hennings was an American painter and printmaker associated with the Taos Society of Artists and the early 20th-century Southern Plains and American Southwest art movements. Born in Minnesota, he trained in Chicago and Europe before settling in Taos, New Mexico, where he became known for portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes depicting Pueblo and Hispano subjects. Hennings exhibited in major American and European venues and contributed to the regionalism and plein air traditions linked to artists active in Santa Fe, Chicago, and New York.

Early life and education

Hennings was born in New Ulm, Minnesota, near Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and his family later moved to Chicago where he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and was influenced by instructors and contemporaries associated with the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Coalition of American Artists. He continued training in Europe, studying in Munich under teachers connected to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Munich) milieu and in Paris where he encountered ateliers tied to the Académie Julian and the salons of the Salon des Artistes Français and Salon d'Automne. During this period he came into contact, through exhibitions and travel, with figures associated with the American Art Students League and artists who had trained with William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, and members of the Ashcan School.

Artistic career

Hennings's early career included work as an illustrator and exhibit participation in institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the National Academy of Design in New York City. He traveled between the Midwest, Europe, and the Southwest, showing in venues linked to the Armory Show legacy and the network of galleries around Rockefeller Center and Union Square. In 1917 he began summer visits to Taos, New Mexico, joining a circle that included members of the Taos Society of Artists and other practitioners who exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy and in Boston salons. By the 1920s he was exhibiting with galleries representing Regionalism-associated painters while also participating in juried shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and touring exhibitions organized by organizations with ties to the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.

Style and influences

Hennings's work synthesized plein air practices and academic draftsmanship drawn from Munich School and French Academic art, combined with a focus on indigenous and Hispano communities of the American Southwest, subjects also undertaken by contemporaries linked to Georgia O'Keeffe, Olga Flora, and Burt Brown Barker-connected collectors. His palette and compositional strategies show affinities with William-Adolphe Bouguereau-influenced academies, the tonalism of James McNeill Whistler, and the narrative realism associated with Winslow Homer and the Hudson River School legacy. Printmaking in Hennings's oeuvre reflects techniques promoted by workshops connected to Edward Hopper admirers and print collectors associated with the Brooklyn Museum and the Art Students League of New York.

Taos community and legacy

As a member of the Taos artistic community, Hennings worked alongside artists such as Ernest L. Blumenschein, Bert Geer Phillips, Joseph Henry Sharp, and Oscar E. Berninghaus, contributing to Taos's reputation promoted by patrons and institutions including the Harwood Museum of Art, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum collectors, and private patrons from Santa Fe and New York City. His depictions of Pueblo and Hispano life were acquired by collectors who also supported exhibitions at the New Mexico Museum of Art and were circulated through dealers connected to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum. Hennings's influence extended to later Southwestern artists and to regional visual culture preserved in archives and collections associated with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the University of New Mexico, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Selected works and exhibitions

Notable paintings and prints by Hennings were included in exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and touring shows that visited venues associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design. Representative works often cited in collection catalogues and auction records include portraits, genre scenes of Pueblo dancers and Hispano domestic life, and landscapes of the Rio Grande valley and the Sangre de Cristo foothills; these works have appeared in retrospectives and thematic exhibitions alongside works by Paul H. Bartlett, E. A. Burbank, Maynard Dixon, Alfred Morang, and Jorge Luis Alvarado. Hennings's prints have been catalogued in portfolios with other Taos artists and shown in print exhibitions at the Library of Congress and galleries in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and Santa Fe.

Category:American painters Category:Taos Society of Artists