Time Magazine tells us in their Feb. 11, 1935 issue how the toon Henry was conceived:

“One day in Wisconsin a hard-working cartoonist name Carl Anderson sweated over an idea for a drawing he hoped to sell to the Saturday Evening Post. Slowly, painfully the idea took form as a sway-back, pot-bellied horse and two small boys. One boy was bald as a buzzard. The other boy lifted him up until his naked pate pressed agaist the horse’s sagging belly. Asked the secondboy, “Does your head fell warmer now, Henry?”
The $50 paid him by the Satevepost for that cartoon looked exceedingly good to Carl Anderson, but the new character he had drawn for the first time looked even better. Henry’s personality appealed to him. The very jname somehow seemed ideal. Artist Anderson concentrated on Henry, perfected the simple lines of his domed head, big ears, full cheeks, skinny neck. Eye, nose & mouth, indicated by circles and dots, formed an expression of sublime self-assurance, competence, unconcern. Henry, according to his maker, was not really bald, he had just had all his hair shaved off.