Robert Henri was born in Cincinnati, in 1865. He enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1886 and went to Paris in 1888 to study at the Académie Julian. He was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1891. He returned to Philadelphia late that year and resumed his studies at the academy. He also began his long and influential career as an art teacher at the School of Design for Women, where he taught until 1895. During this period he met the young newspaper illustrators who would later achieve fame as The Eight: John Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn.

He settled in New York in 1900 and taught at the New York School of Art from 1902 to 1908. Gradually he moved away from the traditions of academic painting and focused on urban subjects executed in a bold, painterly style.

He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1906. In 1907 when the National Academy refused to exhibit works by Henri and his circle, he organized an independent exhibition which resulted in the famous show of The Eight. In 1910 he organized the first Exhibition of Independent Artists and in 1913 he assisted the Association of American Painters and Sculptors organize the Armory Show. He taught at the Art Students League from 1915 until 1927.

Although Henri was an important portraitist and figure painter he is also revered as an influential teacher. His ideas on art were collected and published as The Art Spirit (Philadelphia, 1923). He died in 1929 at the age of sixty-four.

His works are included in numerous museum collections including: Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan;Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée d’Orsay Collection, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, among others.