Albert C.

Barnes

The following is by Carol Eaton Soltis and was found in the American National Biography, published by Oxford
University Press, 1999.

Albert Coombs Barnes (2 Jan. 1872-24 July 1951), collector, educator, and entrepreneur, was born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, the son of John Jesse Barnes, a butcher, and Lydia A. Schafer. Barnes's father lost his right arm in the
Civil War, and his ability to support his family proved sporadic. However, Albert's mother, to whom he was devoted,
was hardworking and resourceful. Among his most vivid childhood memories were the exuberant black religious
revivals and camp meetings he attended with his devout Methodist parents. Accepted at the academically demanding
Central High School, which awarded bachelor's degrees, his early interest in art was stimulated by his friendship with
the future artist William Glackens. Graduating from Central with a B.S. degree in 1889, Barnes played semiprofessional
baseball to help support himself and earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1892. On
completing his internship he decided not to practice medicine.

Barnes had always excelled in chemistry, and he shifted his attention to the chemical aspects of physiology. He visited
Europe in the summer of 1893 and returned again in 1894-1895 to work in clinical medicine and physiology at the
University of Berlin. He also pursued his interests in philosophy and psychology. By 1897 he had become the director of
sales and advertising for Philadelphia's leading pharmaceutical company, H. K. Mulford. Germany was the center of the
lucrative chemical industry, and in 1900 Barnes was sent to Heidelberg, where he briefly studied pharmacology and
philosophy and recruited the chemist and pharmacologist Hermann Hille. In 1901 Barnes married Laura Leighton
Leggett, the daughter of a wealthy and established Brooklyn family. The couple had no children. By 1902 Barnes and
Hille had left Mulford to establish their own company. With Barnes's awareness of the needs of the medical
marketplace and Hille's technical expertise, they produced an improved silver compound with strong antiseptic
properties called Argyrol. Doing the sales and marketing himself, Barnes made his fortune by aggressive worldwide
distribution and vigorous legal protection of his product.

Terminating his partnership with Hille in 1908, Barnes continued to produce Argyrol in his small factory of largely black
workers. Applying his psychological knowledge to secure employee loyalty and efficiency, the paternalistic Barnes
launched a private social experiment, educating his employees in the principles of psychology and expanding their
horizons with the study of literature, philosophy, and art. It was here, in a factory with paintings on the walls, that
Barnes first developed his theories on the appreciation and understanding of art.

By the time the A. C. Barnes Company was sold in 1929, Barnes's expanding art collection had become his all-
consuming interest. In 1912 he had sent William Glackens, who had introduced him to impressionism and
postimpressionism, to Paris to infuse Barnes's traditional collection with contemporary work. Glackens returned with
works by Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and others. Barnes took up the
philosophical challenge presented by these paintings, developing into a champion of "the modern attitude toward
painting." Becoming a discriminating and curious collector, he read voraciously and was eager to learn, debate,
dispute, and bargain. Although independent in his judgments, he was influenced by individuals such as the writer and
collector Leo Stein and the dealers Ambroise Vollard and Paul Guillaume. The latter introduced him to African art.

In 1922 Barnes established the Barnes Foundation "to promote the advancement of education and appreciation of the
fine arts." In March 1925, as the foundation's galleries, designed by Paul Philippe Cret, were completed, Barnes's The
Art in Painting was published. Here he explained how to banish subjective judgments by using the objective and
predictable scientific method. He focused on art's universal elements of line, light, color, and space and their
relationships, and he explained that these elements created art when their unique combination became richly
expressive of common human experience or values. Barnes believed art was not only for the wealthy, the educated, or
the art establishment but rather was a profound and powerful human experience accessible and intelligible to anyone
who had "learned how to see." Although indebted to the ideas of William James, Clive Bell, George Santayana,
Bertrand Russell, and most significantly, his longtime mentor and correspondent John Dewey, Barnes created a unique
formulation. The educational program of the foundation included "the common man," whom Barnes and Dewey saw as
the power behind democratic society.

Barnes wrote numerous essays for periodicals and exhibition catalogs, and with Violette De Mazia, the director of
education of the art department and vice president of the foundation, he produced The French Primitives and Their
Forms (1931), The Art of Henri Matisse (1933), The Art of Renoir (1935), The Art of Cézanne (1939), and Ancient
Chinese and Modern European Painting (1943). The Journal of the Barnes Foundation ran from April 1925 to April
1926.

Barnes's collection of more than 2,000 works ultimately encompassed not only masterpieces of European and American
modernism but also works from the Chinese, Islamic, African, African-American, and Native American traditions. It also
included examples of the Old Masters, the Egyptians, the Ancients, and a large collection of decorative arts. His
displays of objects were organized according to formal and expressive similarities rather than the more traditional
organizational elements of date, place of origin, type, or medium. Barnes's diverse collection manifested his passion for
art and reflected his analytical approach to understanding and appreciating art. His iconoclastic temperament was
drawn to the masters of French modernism who sought to create a new way of seeing, experiencing, and
understanding art. As a result his collection was particularly rich in masterpieces by Claude Monet, Édouard Manet,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurat, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Douanier Rousseau as well as works by
Amedeo Modigliani and Barnes's own discovery, Chaim Soutine. It also contained an extensive selection of Picasso's
early works, but the quality and quantity of works by Renoir, Cézanne, and Henri Matisse was unparalleled anywhere.

In 1950 Barnes amended the foundation's by-laws to empower the African-American Lincoln University to appoint the
foundation's trustees. In 1926, in honor of his support of French modernism, the French government made Barnes a
chevalier of the Legion of Honor and in 1937, an officer. Barnes was killed in an auto accident in Phoenixville,
Pennsylvania, en route from his Chester County home, "Ker-Feal," to his home in Merion, Pennsylvania.

Barnes's continual disputes with institutions and individuals were legendary, and he could often be abusive, both
privately and publicly, with those he considered his enemies. Although capable of extreme generosity, his personality
was highly contentious. The by-laws he created for his foundation limited access to the collection and spawned
repeated controversy and litigation. Still, Barnes's superior artistic sensibility, his intellectual acuity and ambition, and
his drive left the legacy of a truly great collection.

Bibliography

Much has been written about Barnes that is controversial and contradictory. Misinformation and hearsay have been
printed, along with incorrect information he disseminated himself. A definitive and fully documented biography will
require many years of research. Important primary sources are the Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, Pa. (limited
access); Albert C. Barnes-Horace Mann Bond Correspondence, Lincoln University Archives, Lincoln Univ., Oxford, Pa.;
and the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C. For understanding Barnes's convictions about art see Albert C.
Barnes, The Art in Painting (1925), and John Dewey, Barnes et al., Art and Education: A Collection of Essays (1929).
Enormous numbers of press clippings and popular articles chronicle Barnes and the controversies surrounding him. For
selections from the collection and the archive see "A Passion For Art: Renoir, Matisse, and Dr. Barnes," CD-ROM, Corbis
Pub. Publishing. Published sources include William Schack, Art and Argyrol: The Life and Career of Dr. Albert C. Barnes
(1960); Henry Hart, Dr. Barnes of Merion: An Appreciation (1963); and Howard Greenfield, The Devil and Doctor
Barnes: Portrait of an American Collector (1987). The latter includes a note on sources. Two brief but useful essays are
Richard J. Wattenmaker, "Dr. Albert C. Barnes and the Barnes Foundation," and Anne Distel, "Dr. Barnes In Paris," in
Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation (1993). Wattenmaker cites many of Barnes's periodical
publications.