Beyond material help, they also contribute to his artistic training: it is by painting their portraits that Henner explores, and then perfects, this genre to which he will remain deeply attached. Depicted at different ages of their lives, the members of his family are his first but also his last models. This profusion of portraits bears witness to the strength of the bonds that unite Henner to his own, true pillars and sources of inspiration throughout his existence.
The portraits of the members [of Jean-Jacques Henner's family], reproduced twenty times by his devoted hands […] attest well enough what place his mother, his sister Marie-Anne, his brother Grégoire, and above all his brother Séraphin, his wife and their children always held in his heart. If Henner's art is the work of his vocation, Henner himself is the work of his family.
Samuel Rocheblave , « La jeunesse d'Henner», Revue de l'Art Ancien et Moderne, 10 March 190