American Art Collaborative

Robert Henri and his wife, Linda, made their first trip to Spain in 1900. They spent six weeks in Madrid, where Henri lingered at the Prado copying paintings by Velázquez. He traveled to Spain several times over the next few years, painting people from all walks of life with the directness that he had learned as a newspaper illustrator. Among his subjects were two blind street singers, who played their guitars in his studio for hours. Although he believed in painting honestly, he also feared that this painting of one of the women would not be popular because he did not disguise her physical deformity. (Boone, España!: American Artists and the Spanish Experience, 1998