Volendam Street Scene

_Volendam Street Scene_, one of roughly 60 canvases Robert Henri painted during his third visit to Holland, documents rustic Dutch village life and colorful traditional costume. The rapidly executed sketch exemplifies the artist’s desire to capture momentary, spontaneous visual effects. A woman crosses the road in the center foreground, while a group of villagers go about their daily business on the right. Despite the abbreviated forms, their distinctive hats and clogs are recognizable.

Henri visited Europe during the summer of 1910, where he spent the first six weeks in Haarlem, The Netherlands. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Haarlem and the quaint villages around it on the North Sea were frequented by many European and American painters. Volendam is a fishing hamlet north of Amsterdam on the coast of the Zuider Zee that a contemporary British travel guide called “the manufactory of most of those Dutch pictorial scenes known the world over," and recommended its "quaint alleys, its magenta-clothed fishermen, its gaily dressed girls in striped shirts and winged caps."