The registrar at the National Arts Club in Manhattan decided last summer to impose some order on a donated collection of books that once belonged to the Ashcan artist Robert Henri.

It was long overdue. Henri was one of the club’s most prominent members. He organized a groundbreaking 1904 exhibition of American painters at the club’s original building on West 34th Street in Manhattan. When the club moved to the former Samuel J. Tilden mansion on Gramercy Park South, Henri’s studio was just two doors away.