Paul Henking Rare Oil Painting of Lake Garda, Italy (1898)

Italo-Swiss artist Paul Henking led a fascinating life. Born in Verona, Italy of French and Swiss parents, Henking spent his boyhood in one of the most picturesque, beautiful and historically famous parts of Italy — a place overshadowed. by the snow-capped Alps, located on the River Adige in the center of the fertile and productive Venetian-Lombardy Plain.

According the an account from the Springfield (Massachusetts) News-Sun from 1930: "The man who at 20 stood in the shadows of fires that consumed the bodies of soldiers after the Battle of Villafrance wasn’t easily scared at 78 by the shadows cast on Springfield’s streets. Rising at 2 a.m., Henking would walk from his 350 E. Cassilly St. home to the Buffalo-Springfield Road Roller plant at Kenton and East streets, where he worked for 30 years as a timekeeper, paymaster and translator. Springfield genealogy researcher Anne Benston found an entry in the 1910 City Directory that describes Henking as a translator of English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Esperanto, Dutch and Romanian.

Benston continues: That he was a man conversant with a much wider world was made clear in the magazine section of the Sunday, April 8, 1928, Springfield News-Sun. Henking’s boyhood stomping grounds included Lake Garda and a nearby Roman amphitheater. Whereas “the skyscrapers of New York will be demolished someday by earthquake,” Henking wrote, “the Arena withstood hundreds of them and will be there for many centuries to come.”

“One of his earliest paintings,” the story says, “was inspired by its beauty.” Was this painting of Lake Garda the painting mentioned in the earlier newspaper account? We do not know, and how it found its way to the Spurrier home in Davenport, Iowa was probably through the celebrated estate sales of Johnson's Auction House. Mr. Johnson relished liquidating the estates of Davenport's wealthy German-American elite for many years and many treasures that had become separated from departed owners were to discovered there.

Like many children of Italy’s upper classes, Henking left his family at age 7 to study. He was away 13 years, first at a boarding school at St. Gall (Switzerland), then at the University of Stuttgart and finally, the school at Riant-Mont, France. “Not once during this time did he return home,” the story explains.

When he finally did return, he was fluent in many languages, none of which made it possible for him to fully express the horror he was about to witness. The Battle of Villafrance had just been fought, and the freshly-arrived Henking made the 10-mile trip to take in the scene. It took him in instead. Learning that Henking spoke German, an Austrian officer on the scene put him in charge of a detail collecting the identifying numbers on the clothing of dead soldiers. They also were charged with stripping the solders of their clothing, money and other valuables and arranging the bodies in piles. “Because Asiatic cholera had broken out among the soldiers,” the News-Sun story explained, “the supreme command of the Austrian army had sent out orders that the bodies ... should be burned immediately.”

“I would like to see somebody be able to give a true description of the horror I saw that day and night,” he told the News-Sun... On a military conquest in the area a generation before, Napoleon had stopped in Verona, and a Henking family treasure was a prized snuff box Henking’s grandfather bought from a servant who had stolen it. Young Paul Henking would in a similar way have the next few years stolen by military life, first as a soldier in the Italian army, then as an immigrant to the United States. Because of loneliness, he took his military talents south of Miami to help the Cubans in their efforts to gain freedom from Spain.

There more adventures awaited. Captured in an ambush, he was sentenced to be shot to death, but papers showing him to be an officer in the Italian Reserves led instead to a stay in the dungeons of the infamous Morro Castle prison on Havanna Harbor. Said the News-Sun story, “He spent one whole year with a pile of filthy straw for a bed, hard bread and rotten water for food, and a small blocked hole to let in enough light to let him know that there was still light.

“Once a week his jailers came and led him to the whipping room .... From one week to the next his life moved on with his body being beaten and broken again just as soon as it had healed. “However, at the close of the year, after much correspondence from Italy ... and finally a sum of money from his father, the Spaniards set Henking free and ordered him to leave Cuba immediately.”

He made his way to New York, then to Gallipolis, Ohio, where second cousins owned a grocery. At 27, he married Alice Stewart, then moved to Springfield for three years until his father’s illness called him back to Italy. “All the old sounds and old memories recalled themselves ... and it was not long before he had found time outside of his duties supporting the farm to paint. For six years, on and off, he painted under the direction and teaching of the ... artist (Pietro) Calvi.”

For 13 years, the two traveled the countryside painting. Henking then came back to Springfield, working for the by then merged Buffalo-Springfield Road Roller Company. Although he joined the United States Army during the Spanish-American War, Henking never served on active duty. And he was fortunate enough to return from another brief visit to Italy just before World War I began.

The Henkings’ two daughters gave them three grandchildren by 1920, when Mrs. Henking died. Henking would encourage the artistic interest of his grandson Dwinell Grant, who grew into a notable painter associated with the Guggenheim Museum. Eight years after Henking’s wife died, the News-Sun story described Henking as living “a quiet and lonely life."

“In spite of his years ... he is still very active and retains the figure and bearing of the military man.” It added this melodramatic bit of ethnic profiling: “The cut of his mustache, the shape of his head and his medium height proclaim him a Frenchman, while his sturdy build makes you think of the Swiss.”

Still working at that age, it said, “his duties are so numerous that rather than do them at home, he goes to work at this early hour. Too, this extra time gives him a chance to do the things he likes to do. Not having the time to paint anymore, he spends most of his spare moments reading and writing.”

Eleven years later, Henking died in Springfield’s City Hospital after a three-week illness. There followed the last voyage of the man the News-Sun said was “Living a life of adventure” — a funeral procession that brought Henking to rest beside his wife in Section Q of Ferncliff Cemetery.

We took much time to research this enigmatic artist. The frame of our rare Henking painting is rough and needs professional repair — or reframing. The painting itself is in good condition, and we show it above in its current state versus an enhanced state should the future purchaser or institution chose to have it professionally cleaned.