Barnes, Dr Albert C. (1872–1951). American drug manufacturer, art collector, and patron, born in Philadelphia. He made a fortune with the antiseptic Argyrol, which he invented in 1901 (its success is said to have depended largely on its being adopted as the standard anti-venereal treatment of the French army), and by about 1912 he was devoting his life to collecting. Around this time, William
Glackens, an old school friend, encouraged him to turn his attention from the Barbizon School to
Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism; thereafter modern French painting remained his chief field of interest, although he also collected Old Masters and primitive art. In 1922 he established the Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pennsylvania, to house his collection and to provide education in art appreciation. He wrote and lectured on art (his books include
Art in Painting, 1926), but the museum he created was not open to the public during his lifetime, partly because he had a grudge against critics and the art establishment in general after his collection received a hostile reception when it was shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1923. In addition to collecting works, Barnes commissioned
Matisse to paint a mural decoration for the Foundation in 1931, and when it turned out to be unusable because of an error in the measurements he had been given, Matisse did a new version. The abortive scheme,
The Dance I (1931–2), is in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the second scheme,
The Dance II (1932–3), is
in situ in the Barnes Foundation. The collection of Matisse's work is one of the best in the world, and
Cézanne,
Picasso, and
Renoir are among the other artists who are particularly well represented.
In
The Rare Art Traditions: The History of Art Collecting and its Linked Phenomena (1982), Joseph Alsop describes Barnes as ‘perhaps the greatest single American art collector of the twentieth century'. Alsop writes that he used ‘shameless flattery’ to gain admission to the Foundation in 1929, when he was a 19-year-old student, and several of the other visitors who managed to gain access commented on the shortcomings in Barnes's personality. According to Kenneth
Clark, for example, he was ‘not at all an attractive character. His stories of how he had extracted Cézannes and Renoirs from penniless widows made one's blood run cold.’ Jacob
Epstein wrote that he had ‘a reputation for boorishness of which, on my visit to see him, I found no trace', but added that ‘I was told that dictaphones were installed in the walls, so that critics who were facetious or too frank could be instantly reported and told to go'. Among the distinguished artists and art historians who were refused admission to the Foundation were
Le Corbusier, Meyer
Schapiro, and John Rewald (1912–94), author of celebrated histories of Impressionism (1946, 4th edn., 1973) and Post-Impressionism (1956, 3rd edn., 1978). Rewald refers to the ‘unpleasant and sometimes even revolting traits’ of Barnes's character, to his ‘dreadful, crude, and unspeakably stupid manners', and to ‘his cunning, his ruthlessness, and his lack of scruples’ (
Cézanne and America, 1989). Others who fell foul of Barnes included the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who was engaged to give courses of lectures at the Foundation in the early 1940s. Barnes reneged on their contract and Russell successfully sued him.
After Barnes's death (in a car accident), a lengthy campaign was carried out—led by the publisher of the
Philadelphia Inquirer, Walter Annenberg— to try to force the trustees of the Foundation to open the collection to the public or lose its tax-exempt status. An agreement was reached in 1960 allowing restricted public access, but the collection retained its almost legendary aura as a virtually inaccessible treasure trove. In his will Barnes had stipulated that his paintings should remain exactly as he left them, but in 1991 a court ruled that this directive could be overturned in order to raise funds that were needed for the upkeep of the building, and in 1993–4 a selection of paintings from the Foundation went on tour to Paris, Tokyo, and several American cities.
