Robert Henri's "Laughing Girl" shows a young child with short hair proudly showing her grin to the viewer. The model, young Cori Peterson, shows up in multiple other portraits that Henri painted during his summer in Holland in 1907. He loved to paint her, and he captured many of her spontaneous yet fleeting childish laughs. He liked her better than his other model, another young girl whom he described as "delicate" and "pathetic".
This painting shows his style of that summer, where he went out on the
street with small canvases and painted the ephemeral expressions of
children. The brushstrokes are thick with only a dark space as the background. The girl's short hair shows that she was poor, because her parents probably cut it short to help maintain the lice and dirt. Painting poor people was not widely accepted by upper society, and at its premier on February 3, 1908, it did not receive a favorable welcome. However, a patron did purchase it.
http://books.google.com/books?id=GAOCYTyD2_cC&lpg=PR11&ots=z2GTRopTVa&dq=Robert%20henri%20laughing%20child&lr&pg=PA109#v=onepage&q=laughing&f=false
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/list.php?m=a&s=du&aid=663
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa20.htm
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