Henri Schonhardt

1875-1953

Henri Schonhardt settled in Providence to pursue his artistic career as a painter after advanced art study in Paris. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and attended the Academie Julian in 1898, the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs as well as the Ecole Beaux Arts. In 1908 he won a Paris Salon award. He is best known for four life size bronze sculptures of important Rhode Islanders installed throughout the state--his monument of Col Henry Tillinghast Sisson, located at the Commons in Little Compton, installed in 1917; General Nathaniel Greene, installed at the State House in 1931; the Scout, completed in 1911, at Burnside Park in front of City Hall; and the Soldiers and Sailor Monument at Bristol Town Hall, completed in 1914. Trained as a classical artist, Schonhardt was a wonderful painter as well as sculptor. This image of his young neighbor, Eileen McKenna, was painted in the 1930’s. Schonhardt explained to his young sitter that he was studying the effects of light when he placed her at the window bench. Eileen is seen in this painting lamenting her fate, all dressed up and unable to spend the afternoon playing with her brothers in the fields behind their home.