In going round the Barnes Collection, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the range and quality of Barnes’s taste for French art – early Picassos, Matisses, Modigliani, Soutine, alongside the more orthodox Post-Impressionists – but also its apparent randomness, intermingling primitive American paintings with great French ones. He was a research chemist, first visiting Paris in June 1912 when he was 40, after his former classmate, William Glackens, had bought 33 works on his behalf, including van Gogh’s Postman, in February. The collection got a bad press when it was first exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1923 (although apparently less so when first shown in 1921) and he has had a bad press from art historians, whom he disliked and did not admit to see the collection (K. Clark apparently said that ‘one could have struck a match on his neck’). But he was clearly remarkably and impressively independent minded in his commitment to, and belief in, public art education (he held seminars on philosophy at his factory).
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
A real one-off great collector.
Beautiful place to visit.
I’ve never been, indeed have never heard of him or this Collection. It, and his neck (!), sound rather wonderful. Has any of it ever been to London?
Thanks to your Blog, I’ve gone and looked at the Barnes Collection on the Web.
I hadn’t realised that it has many Andrew Wyeths, nor that this is the centenary of his birth. Following the RA’s American exhibition, might you do an Andrew Wyeth show?
It did travel before the collection opened in Philadelphia and was hugely successful in Paris, but never came to London – I guess because the fee charged was too high. Charles
I hope you enjoyed my city and my neighborhood. Thanks to the Barnes Collection joining our “museum mile” it is said there are more Cezannes here than anywhere else. Perhaps you will return for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s special exhibit on the John G Johnson Collection of Old Masters opening shortly.
Yes, I was sorry to be in Philadelphia on Monday when the Museum was closed. Charles