Henry, Charles
NAME: [Henry, Charles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henry_(librarian)
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Theories on optics, audiology, painting techniques
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
16 May 1859, Bollweiller, Haut-Rhin
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
?3 November 1926, Versailles, France. Aged 76
DISCIPLINE:
Scientist and aesthetician
FIELD:
Literature and the arts
LANGUAGE:
French
MAJOR WORK:
“The Chromatic Circle…Giving all the Complementaries and Harmonies of Colours, with an Introduction on the General Theory of Contrast, Rhythm and Measure” 1888.
“The Aesthetic Table…Notice on Its Application to Industrial Art, to the History of Art, to the Interpretation of the Graphic Method and in General to the Study and Rectification of All Forms” 1888.
LIFE AND TIMES:
Virtually nothing is known of Henry’s early life. He came from a bourgeois family and he arrived in Paris in 1875 at the age of sixteen for a course of free studies. He studied at several scientific establishments including that of the physiologist <studied under> Bernard* and the experimental scientist <studied under> Bert*. He also studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and German.
He was interested in oriental mathematical systems and astronomical concepts. Henry also wrote on Galileo, Torricelli, Cavalieri and Castelli, and edited the correspondence between the Marquis de Condorcet and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot; he also edited the correspondence of Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler and Pierre-Simon Laplace.
He wrote about the problems of practical geometry in the mathematics of the seventeenth century and travelled to Rome to search for a lost manuscript of the seventeenth-century mathematician Pierre Fermat. In 1881 he became librarian at the Sorbornne.
Henry’s circle of friends was literary and artistic and included many figures such as the writer and critic Felix Feneon who later became important in the Symbolist movement, and from the 1880’s to the middle of the next decade Henry was an active participant in the debate on new ideas in the arts. In 1884 he published a book on the painting techniques of the old masters entitled “L’encaustique and les autres procedes de peinture chez les anciens.”
The same year wrote an article for “La Revue contemporaine”, on the aesthetics of science. Henry’s theories on the science of aesthetics were based on several different scientific disciplines and were influenced by the work of physiologists such as <influenced by> Helmholtz* and <influenced by> Fechner*. He used the research findings of these scientists to support his hypothesis that sensations induced by aesthetic experience produce quantifiable physiological phenomena in humans.
He also applied the laws of algebra and geometry to his conclusions. For the composition of a picture, he recommended that artists apply a formula based on the golden section of the ancients and on the work of Carl Gauss. In 1886 he was introduced by Feneon to the artist <influenced> Seurat* who was interested in scientific theories about color and painting techniques, and was experimenting with line and color in a way that the Symbolist writers saw as relating to their own theories about literary composition.
Between 1887 and 1891, Seurat’s work developed partly as a result of his contact with Henry, the latter’s principal contribution being his stimulation of the Seurat’s interest in the expressive possibilities of color and line.
Henry was engaged in trying to establish laws which related the laws of the aesthetic harmony of colors to the laws of optics and music, and he wrote numerous articles which were published in contemporary journals. In 1887 he published his “Theorie de Rameau sur la musique” and “Wronski et l’esthetique musicale”. Two years later he produced his “Cercle chromatique”, which included a mathematical formula for gradations of colour that was of great interest to Seurat and his follower the artist <collaborated with> Signac*.
Henry criticised <criticized> Chevreul’s* earlier work on colour mixture and claimed that Chevreul had not been rigorous enough in producing his angle measurements. He supported his own ideas on color mixture with the demonstration by Helmholtz and James Clerk Maxwell that all of the colors of the solar spectrum, as well as white light, could be recreated by the additive mixture of the primaries of light (red, green and blue-violet).
In the preface to his book on the chromatic circle, Henry also discussed the phenomena associated with line. Although he produced mathematical formulae and a theory of linear directions he never claimed to be providing artists with a mechanical tool for creation. He was concerned to establish the principles of harmony and expression in a series of mathematical formulae constructed around the measurement of angles and rhythms between lines and color which would merely provide the basis for the individual creativity of the artist.
Seurat’s principal follower, the artist Paul Signac, collaborated with Henry on “L’Education du sens des formes” and “L’Education du sens des couleurs”.
In 1892 Henry was made “Maitre de conferences a l’ecole des hautes etudes” at the Sorbonne. He continued to publish works on psychology, mathematics and aesthetics and also understook chemical research. He discovered a phosphorescent sulphur of zinc and other products of use to industry such as varnishes. He studied radiation and other electronagnetic phenomena.
Apart from the fact that he had a passion for bicycling, there are few details of Henry’s life during the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1910 he received his doctorate for a thesis on sensation and energy, and memory and habit. Around this time he was appointed director of the laboratory of the physiology of sensations at the Sorbonne.
In his latter years his laboratory was moved to Coyes near Versailles. One of his last projects was an attempt to catalyze the hydrogen atom in a way that would release huge amounts of energy.
His final work was an essay which summed up his thoughts on psycho-biophysics entitled “Generalization of the Theory of Radiation” (1924) in which he concluded that the subject remained a mystery to which only Buddhist wisdom would provide the answer. Henry died in 1926.
ASSESSMENT: Henry is remembered for his mathematical formulae for color and line which influenced the work of the French neo-Impressionists.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: He made a major contribution to art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Arguelles, Jose A, Charles Henry and the Formation of a Psychophysical Aesthetic, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1972
Broude, Norma, ed., Seurat in Perspective, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New Jersey, 1978
Rewald, John, Seurat, A Biography, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990
Archives of French Biography.
Charles Henry (librarian) - Wikipedia
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