Ralph Henry’s Mother

This lovely portrait of Ralph Henry’s mother was created as an affectionate gift for his architect friend for helping him along the way. Ralph Coolidge Henry was working in the firm of Guy Lowell for the many years that Allen knew him. Lowell was the famous designer of the Museum of Fine Arts and it is believed that Henry was the principal assisting architect for the Evans Wing. At the time when they met, the young Allen had been assigned a 23-foot granite bas relief on the exterior of the Museum on the Fenway side of the Evans Wing (1912-14) and with Henry’s encouragement ten years later secured from Lowell the enormous project of the Pediment of the NYC Courthouse with its 13 figures in relief and three 16-foot rooftop Acroteria statues in the round. 

Artists would commonly thank each other for favors and friendships by gifting them with a piece of their work. Allen here showed his gratitude by depicting the architect’s dear mother in a sensitively-done bas relief portrait.

She faces to the right in profile slightly behind and above the center lines within the frame so that her face is highlighted. The contrasting dark contours clearly define her profile in the shadows created in spite of the shallow depth of the relief. Delicate details of her hair and lacy blouse are presented almost as an impressionist would paint them, creating form with the reflection of light off the high and low places in the clay. Sometimes the relief is so low that it blends into the background of the portrait (scacciato), yet the fine detail of a wisp of hair, individual hairs of the eyebrows, wrinkles around her eye, edges of fine lace and the feeling of the fabric of the blouse are clear. The textured and smooth places counterbalance each other, creating interest and form. Impressionists painted the light, and here Allen does the same with his clay.

It was a practice of his forebear Augustus St. Gaudens, to bring the background all the way to the edges and use a fine border to barely contain the portrait. Here, where there is a border, it is slightly raised or a thin rolled edge. Crosswise shallow combings in the upper left of the ground and the base of the rectangle repeat the lines on the back of her shoulder. A symbol at the bottom right is an identifying mark, perhaps that of an architect or a cryptic artists signature stamp.

The portrait is delicate, gentle and quiet, refined and feminine, a lovely gift for a good friend from another man who loved his mother.