Snowy Landscape

Snowy Landscape depicts farm buildings located in a mountain valley, their grays and reds deeply saturated to attract the viewer's eye. The structures are perhaps slightly simplified, some lacking windows or even doors, and none seems to be the living quarters. (Compare this to Henry’s strikingly similar Valley Farm [1940] to appreciate the decisions informing this earlier painting.) Henry’s work compels emotion in his audience with the adopted color scheme: besides these snug buildings, the sky’s color has blue tones that do not indicate turbulence but rather a sense of calm. Because the work was produced amid national apprehension, Henry’s rendering of a cold scene implies a certain perseverance needed by the nation through this troubling time. Henry creates depth with the use of rolling hills, fences dividing pastures, and trees in the background behind the house. The foreground’s use of a fence adds even more depth but also a sense of privacy. A subtle use of brown creates contours to the snow; even Henry’s signature follows one such line. Although not created for any specific exhibition location, Snowy Landscape evokes a sense of comfort and connection to nature—especially when compared to the extreme drought and rural bankruptcies across most of 1930s America. This farm scene would have reminded its viewers of home, whether topographically or temporally: a world they’d want to inhabit.

About the Artist

Charles Trumbo Henry was born in Niagara Falls, NY in 1902. He grew up in Missouri and studied art at the Missouri State Teachers College (today, Truman State University) and the Kansas City Art Institute. Henry moved to New York in the late 1920s to study at the Art Students League, an organization with which he maintained a long connection and leadership role. He was a painter known for his colorful depictions of American landscapes, informed by a regionalist sensibility. “Young painters in New York are going back to their homes in the middle west to paint the country they know,” he wrote in 1933 (“Charles Henry Exhibits”). Henry was employed first by the Public Works of Art Project and then the Federal Art Project, spanning the years 1935 to 1943. He exhibited works in the Whitney Museum in New York City, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, National Academy of Design, and the Carnegie Institute, among other venues. In 1937 Henry was selected to create a mural for the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., featuring construction of the Triborough Bridge at Hell Gate.  A year later, he was selected for a project that became a mural located in the U.S. post office in Cornelia, GA. That led to an unusual nine-month assignment at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, where he taught art workshops, developed a vocational program, and even consulted on the paint colors for various rooms (“Charles Henry on New Art Projects”). After WWII Henry and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to paint but of economic necessity also became lead fundraiser for a cancer not-for-profit (“Sunday’s Painter”). One review of a 1949 solo show in New York suggested that “Henry keeps his colors low in key, and his delicate gift of factual observation never fails him when the object being looked at is at close hand” (S.P.). 2 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 4 images at FAP.

Works Consulted: “Charles Henry Exhibits Work in New York,” Kirksville Daily Express 27 Aug. 1933: 4; “Charles Henry on New Art Projects,” Kirksville Daily Express 7 Feb. 1939; “Sunday’s Painter One-Man Show Depicts Landscapes,” Los Angeles Daily News 27 Jan. 1951: 4; S.P., “2 One-Man Shows Mark Art Scene,” New York Times 24 June 1949: 21 Link

Henry, Charles Trumbo (1917 - 1981)

Copolla, Victoria (description and biography)

Cooper, Ken (biography)

Helquist, Morgan (photography)

New Deal Gallery, Mount Morris NY

Object #FA 20641

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Oil on canvas painting

Canvas: 30 1/8 x 24 in.
Frame: 36 5/8 x 30 3/4 in.