Total records that have a short description: 1104
| Invno # | Short Description |
|---|---|
| 01.24.03 | <p>At some point in its history, the neck hole of this poncho-serape was sewn shut to be sold in the tourist trade. The symmetrical designs, however, were meant to be worn and likely include meaningful symbols that reference Dinétah, the Navajo homeland. Tightly woven wool garments by Navajo artists provided physical and spiritual protection. This early example incorporates red yarns reused and reworked from trade cloth.</p> |
| BF805 | <p>Dr. Albert C. Barnes acquired and arranged all the works in these galleries between 1912 and 1951. The Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico painted this portrait in 1926, a year after Dr. Barnes opened his original building in Merion. De Chirico and Dr. Barnes had become friends after Dr. Barnes bought several of the artist's works, and the painting reflects this relationship. A framed painting by de Chirico is visible in the background, probably an allusion to the canvas now in Room 6, which Dr. Barnes had just purchased.</p> |
| BF348 | <p>Hermine David, a fellow artist and Pascin's partner, is recognizable thanks to her long, aquiline nose and square-cut ginger hair. David left Paris in 1914 to join Pascin in Brooklyn, where he had found refuge from the war in Europe. Together, they toured the South, drawing side by side. David was also a frequent model, and Pascin often depicted her engaged in domestic activities such as sewing, reading, or dressing—though rarely while practicing her own art.</p> |
| BF491 | <p>Demuth visited Bermuda in 1916–17, and while there he painted a breakthrough series of landscapes inspired by cubism and the works of Cézanne. This waterside scene centers on a gnarled tree, whose boughs spin out toward a jumble of bungalows and a pinwheel of palm fronds. The overlapping planes—plus the lightness of Demuth's touch and palette—evidence the artist's love of vitality and ambiguity.</p> |
| BF492 | <p>In 1916–1917 Demuth and his friend Marsden Hartley visited Bermuda. While there he experimented with cubism and the legacy of Cézanne in a breakthrough series of landscapes. In this picture, the ruled lines and faceted planes of ships' prows and masts complement the curvilinear cowl vents and the arabesque forms of the ocean waves.</p> |
| BF490 | <p>Designed after his infamous painting <em>Bathers at Rest</em> (BF906), which the French state rejected from a large bequest, <em>The Large Bathers</em> is the first lithograph Cézanne produced. He originally conceived it as a black-and-white print, but at the request of his dealer, Ambroise Vollard, he later added watercolor to make it into a color lithograph. The printmaker Auguste Clot executed each color stone to produce the final product.</p> |
| BF524 | <p>John Sloan was a founding member of the Ashcan School, a group of artists known for painting scenes of urban life in downtown Manhattan. He attended the same Philadelphia high school as Albert Barnes and the painter William Glackens, who helped Dr. Barnes start his collection. While Sloan was known for painting scenes of life he witnessed in New York's working-class neighborhoods, this canvas depicts a more traditional nude, likely painted from an artist's model in a studio setting. Sloan's loose brushstrokes only lightly suggest some of the details of the composition, such as the pattern on the green scarf that rests under the figure's reclining body.</p> |
| BF320 | <p>American artist Lynd Ward created this image for the book <em>Now That the Gods Are Dead</em> by Llewelyn Powys, published by Equinox Press in 1932. A man and a woman embrace while kneeling upon a starry firmament, illustrating this passage: "The secret of life is to be found in gathering heightened realizations through the immediate subjective experiences of each of our mother-naked bodies. The office of our minds is to catch these supreme moments off their guard, revealing them in their undisguised reality as fragments of an unfolding scroll without an end and with a beginning." Ward's woodcuts blend stylistic and technical elements from the Northern Renaissance, the German expressionists, Art Deco, and American social realism. Their graphic quality confers a special urgency to the matters of social and spiritual progress held dear by the artist.</p> |
| BF495 | <p>American artist Lynd Ward created this image for the book <em>Now That the Gods Are Dead</em> by Llewelyn Powys, published by Equinox Press in 1932. Here, a nude man kneels on a hill and examines one of seven human skulls. In the background are five gravestones in front of a church with a Gothic-style portal and steeply pitched roof. A full moon is visible behind clouds. In the passage that inspired this picture, Ward writes: "Dead, dead, dead, all dead, utterly forgotten... I have but to think of the congregation in the village church of my home as it used to be, Sunday after Sunday... My time would [now] be fully occupied in counting the skulls now under the ground." Ward's woodcuts blend stylistic and technical elements from the Northern Renaissance, the German expressionists, Art Deco, and American social realism. Their graphic quality confers a special urgency to the matters of social and spiritual progress held dear by the artist.</p> |
| BF803 | <p>Charles Prendergast, brother of the painter Maurice Prendergast, presents an idyllic scene of blossoming trees, a blue lake, frolicking animals, and human figures; one of them blows a purple bubble from a reed. Some wear fanciful costumes that reflect the artist's varied sources in the premodern art of Europe, the Near East, and South and East Asia. The overall narrative is enigmatic; in particular, the nude woman enveloped in a radiant full-body halo seems to be a composite of the pagan goddess Venus and the Virgin Mary. Prendergast made this by incising the gesso (plaster) that covers the bare wood of the panel to create his forms before applying paint.</p> |
| BF525 | <p>In the corner of a room with orange-and-blue floral wallpaper sits a square table, covered in a boldly patterned pink tablecloth. The tabletop tilts upward to display what it supports: three green fruits, a rainbow dish, and a blue-and-white ceramic candle holder. Maurer's decorative arrangement playfully proposes new metaphysical realities, bridging the boundaries between vision and imagination. One of Maurer's Fauve masterpieces, <em>Still Life</em> engages ideas of color and pictorial structure from Matisse and Cézanne, plus some of the ornamental repertory of East Asian art.</p> |
| A305 | <p>A bowl like this would have been used for meals in a Zuni household, during kachina ceremonies, or even as a lid for water jars. Typically, most Zuni households had a single large bowl, for making dough for bread, and a number of smaller bowls like this one, for individual or shared portions at meals. The exterior features traditional stylized feather prayer plumes, which swirl across the bowl's surface as if carried by the wind.</p> |
| A310 | <p>This water jar was made by Catalina Zuni, an esteemed Zuni potter, in the early 20th century. Much of the imagery, including the toad and tadpoles that encircle the exterior, originates from medicine-jar decorations. Toads and frogs were symbols of abundance and healing to the Zuni, likely due to their intimate connections to water and the transformations inherent to their life cycles. The split-wing birds and dragonflies reflect the traditional themes of water, air, and the cycle of nature.</p> |
| A336 | <p>Large vessels such as this one were used to store crops, clothing, and other materials. The triangular band encircling the neck and the four-panel design of the main body are typical of Kewa Pueblo pottery, while the medallions in the center of each panel may represent the sun, flowers, or seeds. The radiating symbols within the medallions resemble squash or <em>Datura</em> blossoms, both of which are significant in the Pueblo world. Similar blossom motifs are also found on dance headdresses.</p> |
| A383 | <p>This four-color storage jar has a rounded body, up-thrust neck, and two alternating decorative motifs. One motif features an abstracted, curvilinear rainbird in red, embellished with a series of diamonds. The other is a bird wreathed by a feathered rosette and framed by a red-and-yellow rainbow. In Pueblo culture, clay is a gift from Mother Earth, and birds are messengers that carry prayers for rain, bountiful crops, and good health to the otherworld.</p> |
| A360 | <p>Unlike many modern ceramicists, who use glaze to accentuate colors and provide a glossy, reflective surface, Pueblo potters burnished their vessels, often using a round stone from a creek bed to achieve a lustrous sheen. This Pueblo jar is unusual in that it seems that an artificial polish, perhaps aged wax, was applied to the surface to produce its shine.</p> |
| A376 | <p>It is important to remember that Pueblo ceramics were not only highly valued artworks but also utilitarian objects. This Zia water vessel was designed to be handled and carried by a person traveling to distant water sources. Its large, seemingly cumbersome size is counteracted by its light, thin, and durable walls, which reduce its weight. The highly polished surface is both eye-catching and pleasing to touch, though it can make the jar slippery to hold when wet.</p> |
| A313 | <p>This water jar features the distinctive white slip (a mixture of clay, water, and other materials) and red base characteristic of Zia Pueblo pottery. The largely black-and-white design is highly ornate, with a checkerboard neck, zigzag mouth, and body with rainbow, lightening, feather, and raincloud motifs. Above the larger rainbow motif is a soaring thunderbird with an eye-catching crest of feathers. The roadrunner is a common motif in Zia pottery, as the animal was believed to offer protection against evil spirits. </p> |
| A339 | <p>This is one of the few Pueblo bowls that Albert Barnes collected, as he seems to have preferred the larger and more ornately decorated storage and water jars. These bowls were used for eating, and the open mouth allowed for the interior to be painted and burnished as well. It features a typical Kewa style of decoration, with a red interior slip, white exterior slip, painted red band on the base, and repeating black trapezoidal pattern painted on the body.</p> |
| A343 | <p>The depictions of tadpoles, frogs, and dragonflies on these Zuni ollas (water jars) symbolize transformation; tadpoles, for example, are born in the water like fish and turn into frogs or toads that can live on land. Although images like this usually appear on ceremonial vessels, these jars show no sign of use and were probably made for sale by the potter Catalina Zuni. The split-wing birds are characteristic of her style.</p> |
| A335 | <p>Adorning this silver necklace are 25 squash-blossom beads and a crescent-shaped <em>názhah</em> (central pendant) with sunburst terminals. A fluted Navajo button set with turquoise is tied with buckskin to the top of the <em>názhah</em>. Turquoise is a sacred stone in multiple Native American traditions, symbolizing (for instance) the sky, water, and good fortune. Accompanying the squash-blossom necklace is a pair of Zuni Pueblo hoop earrings. The attached tag reads, "Rare, 42.00, Necklace and earrings, said to have belonged to old Chief Ignacio of the Southern Ute, Colorado."</p> |
| A333 | <p>Storage jars such as this were made by highly skilled Pueblo potters, a role dominated by women in Pueblo societies. This jar was made using a coiling technique, where coils of clay are stacked and then smoothed over to form the body. It was then painted, in this case using the characteristic stylized clouds and plants of the Kewa style, which creates an optical illusion. It was likely used in the home for the storage and preparation of food.</p> |
| A353 | <p>Santa Ana Pueblo pottery is rare, as it was only made in large quantities until about 1925, when production largely died out. At the time Dr. Barnes purchased them in the 1920s, these pots were in their final years of manufacture. The three examples of this pottery tradition in the collection represent important cases for conservation and future study.</p> |
| A355 | <p>This water jar has a rather exaggerated shape compared with other examples of its type, with a tall neck and flaring rim, both of which accentuate the tapering, pointed body and foot. It also features bold bird and feather designs crisply painted in black, which contrast with the cream and red slips of the body. These details might suggest that the jar was produced specifically as a ceremonial vessel or for the art market, rather than for everyday utilitarian purposes.</p> |
| A357 | <p>Traditional Pueblo pottery are entirely handmade, from their shaping to their painted decoration. Zia Pueblo pots, such as this water jar, are known for their large size. The vessels were formed by stacking coils of clay on top of one another and then smoothing the walls together by hand and with a round-edged tool. The objects were then burnished with a rag. Once dried, they were painted and fired.</p> |
| A358 | <p>Zia pottery is well known for stylized birds and abstract floral motifs. The bird motif became so popular and widespread that the designs are sometimes simply referred to as "Zia birds." It is not always clear what species of bird the design is meant to represent. Some sport a running pose and distinct head crest; these refer to roadrunners, a symbol of magical protection. In other cases, like this jar, there seems to be no specific species intended.</p> |
| A359 | <p>The black-on-white geometric designs on this water jar are part of a long tradition in Pueblo pottery of the Southwest. The repetition of the triangular, rectilinear, and checkerboard motifs creates a rhythmic band around the bulbous and irregularly shaped mid-body. This jar dates to the era before the transcontinental railroad opened in the 1880s, which made the Southwest more easily accessible to visitors. Barnes preferred pottery from this era because the objects were not expressly made for the tourist market.</p> |
| A379 | <p>Water jars such as this one played an essential role in gathering and storing water for daily use. Pueblo communities usually lived in settlements perched atop mesas—steep, flat-topped outcroppings of rock. Most mesas did not have a permanent water source, and these communities relied on seasonal rains, meltwater from ice and snow, and natural soil moisture for sustenance and agriculture. Daily water had to be sourced from nearby springs, creeks, rivers, or man-made reservoirs, and water retrieval often required a difficult climb down and up the mesa cliffs while carrying small water jars.</p> |
| 01.34.03 | <p>This Zia storage jar has a tan slip on the body and a repeating row of painted stylized parrots in red, who perch on flowering fruit branches. The parrots are not traditional images used in Zia ceramic painting and are likely influences from Acoma Pueblo traditions. This type of storage jar, with its large body and small mouth, would be used as a household water basin. The flared rim was for securing a lid.</p> |
| 01.34.04 | <p>This Zuni Pueblo water jar would have been used for fetching and storing water in the home and during ritual ceremonies in a Kiva, partially underground ceremonial chambers. The imagery on the jar directly references this function. There is a design of alternating prayer feathers around the neck, while two scenes repeat on the body: one of a large, stylized rainbird and another of a rosette with two prayer feathers above and below. The feathers and rainbirds, which were painted using swirls and hatched lines, evoke the movement of wind and water.</p> |
| A316 | <p>With its bright white slip (a mixture of clay, water, and other materials), black decoration, and water-themed imagery, this jar exhibits many characteristics of Zuni pottery. Decorating the neck are images of tadpoles, which also appear on the body alongside toads and winged creatures that could be birds or dragonflies. All of these animals are associated with water and often appear after the rain, making them potent symbols of renewal and life to the Zuni Pueblo peoples.</p> |
| A366 | <p>This is the sole example of Tesuque Pueblo ceramics in the Barnes collection, as Albert Barnes seems to have preferred pottery from the Zuni, Acoma, Zia, and Santo Domingo communities. While the cream-slip body and black painted decoration recall Zuni and San Ildefonso styles, the red and tan band on the bottom and the areas of surface denting from polishing distinguishes the jar from these wares. Around the rim are repeating stylized rainbirds, while the body has geometric designs and a Spanish-inspired rosette.</p> |
| A365 | <p>The slightly squat shape of this water jar is typical of Zuni Pueblo ceramics and can be seen in some of the other Zuni vessels in this case. Around the rim are abstracted floral, diamond, and geometric motifs. On the body are images of deer inside stylized houses. These motifs have been documented by Zuni women as being symbols of good luck for hunters, as deerskin and deer meat were valuable sources of income and food, respectively, for Pueblo communities. Flanking these are rosettes, which were likely inspired by Spanish decorative arts.</p> |
| A388 | <p>A rare surviving example of pottery from the Santa Ana Pueblo, this three-color jar is a highlight of the Barnes Foundation's collection of Native American ceramics. The shape is typical of water jars—the short neck flares out into a rounded and decorated mid-body, which then tapers to a monochrome foot. The curving design features an animal motif, likely a bird with a stylized body and feathers. Birds in Pueblo culture often symbolized prayers for rain.</p> |
| A347 | <p>The tall neck and flaring rim of this water jar would have helped to keep its contents from spilling while also providing more surface area for decoration. Santo Domingo ceramic painters placed emphasis on creating repeating geometric forms marked by ample negative space, which you can see nicely in this example.</p> |
| A372 | <p>The body of this jar features rainbows surrounded by patches of hatched lines that likely symbolize curtains of falling rain. Images of rainbows and rain are common in Pueblo water jars. However, the hearts with interior dotted patterns located in the center of these rainbows are a Spanish motif first adapted by the Laguna and Acoma Pueblo. The incorporation of this motif on a Zia water jar is likely the result of the transmission of artistic ideas between different Pueblo societies.</p> |
| A368 | <p>Traditional images of birds, rainbows, and flowers mark this jar as a Zia ceramic. While the images are traditional, there is an unusually marked attention to the use of contrasting colors. The birds alternate between having a red body with yellow wings, and a yellow body with red wings, depending on which side of the rainbow they are on. This creates a pleasing aesthetic symmetry that encourages the viewer to turn and view the vessel from different angles.</p> |
| A352 | <p>A number of these water jars made by Catalina Zuni, a master Zuni potter, have little signs of wear and appear not to have been used for their traditional roles in storing water. Instead they were likely made to be sold to tourists who made their way to Arizona and New Mexico using the newly completed Route 66 in the early 1920s. These travelers provided valuable income for Pueblo communities, who sold ceramics, jewelry, textiles, and other craft works from the side of the highway.</p> |
| A367 | <p>Traditions and techniques of Pueblo vase painting were highly individualistic, with potters developing their own preferences and styles. While the design and decoration of this water jar may look very similar to other examples of Zia vase painting in this case, there are distinct styles present. Looking at the bird motifs across the Zia jars, you can see how the birds differ in shape, color, and execution. Often these individual styles and techniques originated with particular families and were passed down from mother to daughter.</p> |
| A387 | <p>This pendant presents an image of the Pueblo universe on the top of a shell. The mosaic of turquoise stones depicts the sky. The design also invokes origin stories of the watery underworld from which the people emerged. When worn, the pendant centers the wearer in relationship with ancestors and supernatural beings.</p> |
| A382 | <p>This jar provides an example of how Pueblo ceramics were repaired after breaking, a frequent result of being carried to gather water. Looking closely at the neck of this jar you can see a number of breaks that have been glued together; a leather cord has been tied around the neck to prevent expansion along these cracks. These vessels were so highly valued to Pueblo peoples that they preferred to repair them when broken, rather than discarding them and procuring a new one.</p> |
| A320 | <p>This jar has a repeating design of black-and-white feathers, with a diagonal yellow register in the middle, as well as abrasians at the rim. Albert Barnes was interested not only in the painted decoration of Pueblo pottery but also in the evidence of breaks, repairs, and paint loss. For Dr. Barnes, such signs of wear emphasized the everyday use of these vessels.</p> |
| A370 | <p>The form and style of this Acoma water jar are distinctive for the early 20th century, when Acoma pottery saw a revival in production in response to tourists arriving in the Southwest on the newly completed railroads. This jar exhibits a mixture of Pueblo and Spanish influences, with Pueblo deer-in-houses motifs on the upper and lower registers, repeating Zuni Pueblo style birds in the middle register, and curvilinear arabesque designs, derived from Spanish Moorish art, which frame the motifs.</p> |
| A389 | <p>This storage jar attests to the lasting effects of Spanish colonial rule. Under its system of forced labor, which lasted until the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, Pueblo families were taxed a fanega of corn (about 1.5 bushels) every October. Although this jar was not made for that purpose, its size is derived from this system. The design features tied bundles of sacred turkey feathers in medallions, and the X-shaped motif references the cardinal directions.</p> |
| BF13 | <p>Mont Sainte-Victoire, which towered over the Aix-en-Provence region of southern France, was one of Cézanne's favorite motifs. He spent his childhood exploring its terrain, and he painted it several dozen times from different vantage points. The mountain also held symbolic meaning to the artist, representing the ancient countryside—the authentic France—during a moment of rapid industrialization and modernization. On the right side of the canvas, one can just make out an ancient Roman aqueduct.</p> |
| BF18 | <p>Six green-and-orange pears are stacked on a plate, set in turn upon a rush-seated chair. The chair appears nearly vertical; the pears threaten to roll out of the picture. Cézanne believed that everyday objects had a certain inner force that our gazes bring to life. Perhaps this worldview partly explains his distorted pictorial structures, in which things like pears can move and mean improbably.</p> |
| BF1 | <p>The painting shows Gabrielle Renard, a beloved nursemaid to the Renoir family who became one of the artist's favorite models. Often Renoir presents Gabrielle in a maternal role, as in the <em>Artist's Family</em> (Room 1) or <em>The Writing Lesson</em> (Room 14). Here, however, Renoir presents a more eroticized version of her. The glittery necklace and cascading scarf are likely props from the artist's studio, while the rose-colored palette—including the tones spreading across her cheeks—suffuses the picture with sensuality.</p> |
| BF319 | <p>This scene of crowds by the sea is a dazzling visual encyclopedia of styles and ideas that Prendergast had explored since the 1890s. Here, he invigorates the composition of his early watercolor <em>Low Tide, Beachmont</em> (Worcester Art Museum, c. 1902-04) with techniques adapted from medieval and Renaissance mosaics and tapestries as well as from paintings by modernist artists including Cézanne, Signac, Puvis de Chavannes, and Renoir—even the hills beyond the water appear to be a variant of Cézanne's beloved Mont Sainte-Victoire. Indeed, Prendergast once proclaimed, "Genius is the power of assimilation."</p> |
| BF969 | <p>This is one of several works Renoir produced during his 1889 trip to Aix-en-Provence, where he visited Paul Cézanne and rented a house from Cézanne's sister and brother-in-law. In the distance is a dovecote, or a pigeon tower. Several paintings by Cézanne show this building from the same angle, opening up the possibility that the two artists painted side by side. Renoir's brushwork here is much more organized than usual, with strokes laid in parallel, suggesting his friend's influence.</p> |
| BF48 | <p>Known for his depictions of fashionable Parisian women in hats, Renoir here devotes himself to a rural version of the theme. Unconcerned with the rigors of modern life, a young woman wearing simple peasant clothing sits alone amid a lush natural setting. Her straw hat emerges as the most detailed element in the picture, with its tight, flesh-colored rosebuds and green grosgrain ribbon. In his late work, Renoir advocated for a return to nature, evidenced here by the subject's total absorption in her surroundings. </p> |
| BF209 | <p>During the mid-1890s, Paul Cézanne lived and worked at his father's estate in the rural South of France. Far removed from the hustle and bustle of Paris, he focused on painting the surrounding landscape and the handful of people who were at his disposal—especially gardeners and farmhands. The figure in this painting is probably a man named Père Alexandre. As in all of his paintings of peasants from around the estate, Cézanne gives his figure a pronounced sense of dignity without being sentimental.</p> |
| BF29 | <p>Three pomegranates sit on a white cloth. One has its leaves attached, one is still yellow, and one is split open, exposing the seeds. Thick, multicolored brushstrokes energize the composition and give a sense of tactility to the fruits. The split pomegranate looks especially enticing and signals the continuity between Renoir's fruits and his female nudes.</p> |
| 01.02.08 | <p>The glossy texture of this water jug comes from a salt glaze—a technique where large quantities of salt are thrown into the kiln during the firing process. On the vessel's shoulder, the artist painted a cobalt-blue dove and enhanced its form by incising an outline around the figure. Both the glazing technique and decoration of this jug are related to the work of Henry Remmy, a 19th-century potter active in Baltimore and Philadelphia.</p> |
| 01.02.09 | <p>This 18th-century Pennsylvania German chest was made in nearby Berks County. The unicorn design derives in part from the British coat of arms, with its rearing lion and unicorn, and from the emblem of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which is flanked by horses. These types of chests were used to store household goods and could even be used as tables or for extra seating.</p> |
| BF89 | <p>During Cézanne's time, abandoned houses were common in the countryside of Provence due to the rules of inheritance, which distributed property equally among sons. Here Cézanne records specific details of the structure, like the thick crack on the facade that leads up to a small window. The relationship of the house to the surrounding wall is difficult to discern, particularly in the left-hand corner, where the perspective seems to shift. Such deliberate spatial ambiguities are typical of Cezanne's landscapes from this period.</p> |
| BF710 | <p>Marie-Hortense Fiquet posed frequently for her husband, Paul Cézanne. The two met in Paris in 1869, when Fiquet was working as an artist's model; their son, Paul, was born in 1872. Cézanne kept the relationship—and child—a secret from his disapproving father for 14 years.</p> |
| BF928 | <p>Van Gogh often called his still lifes "color studies." By arranging flowers in different combinations and setting them against saturated fields of color, he could experiment with bold new chromatic relationships. Van Gogh painted this canvas in May 1888, a few months after he had moved to the village of Arles in the South of France. Several still lifes from his Arles period feature the same objects depicted here—the blue majolica vase with painted decoration and the white teacup.</p> |
| BF70 | <p>Renoir frequently relied on his own children as models for his paintings. Here we have a depiction of the artist's second son, Jean, at the age of about three. Best known as the director of such classic French films as <em>The Rules of the Game</em>, Jean Renoir is captured in the innocence of care-free childhood. The work is both a casual portrait as well as a study in corals and reds, with the bow in the subject's hair accentuating his rosy cheeks and lips.</p> |
| BF175 | <p>Glackens spent several summers in the quiet seaside community of Bellport, Long Island, where he painted his family and friends enjoying the sand and water. Here, six women lounge in the shade of trees and umbrellas with tangerine-colored stripes. The bright colors and dappled light effects reflect the artist's growing interest in French impressionist techniques.</p> |
| BF282 | <p>This is one of four drawings created by Glackens in 1909 as illustrations for "The Practical Joke," a story by Eden Phillpotts in <em>Putnam's Magazine</em>. The story tells the tale of a man named Edward Bickford, whose silver racing trophy is stolen from his bar, the Seven Stars by his brother, Forrester. The robbery is discovered by two of the narrator's friends when they attempt to play a practical joke on him. This drawing depicts the story's narrator walking home from a bar with two friends.</p> |
| BF329 | <p>Skulls appear frequently in the European still-life tradition, serving as reminders of the fleetingness of life. Cézanne tended to avoid such props, however, favoring more ordinary household items like napkins, fruit, and ceramic vessels. It wasn't until the last decade of his life that Cézanne began to include skulls with some regularity—perhaps reflecting a preoccupation with his own mortality. The smudges of orange paint across the eye socket are probably the result of this canvas leaning against another in his Aix-en-Provence studio.</p> |
| BF51 | <p>A young girl with long, auburn locks leans forward over a table, eagerly reading her book. Her happy absorption in her activity parallels Renoir's own in painting her. He forms her round, rosy cheek with layers of feathery strokes, its form echoed by the puffed shoulder of her frock. Her lustrous hair, described with yellows, browns, and reds, tumbles down her back, emphasizing the diagonal line of her body. One of the first works to enter the collection, this picture conveys Renoir's vision of the unselfconscious freshness and innocence of childhood.</p> |
| BF939 | <p>For much of the 1880s and 1890s, Cézanne lived and worked at the Jas de Bouffan, his father's estate on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence. Often he painted scenes from around the property, which included a large 18th-century house and formal gardens. Here he focuses on an alley formed by two rows of chestnut trees, translating the light filtering through the leaves into a grid-like pattern of geometric shapes. Green foliage is suggested by deliberate parallel marks.</p> |
| BF17 | <p>This informal arrangement of everyday fruits includes a pair of ripe, red apples and another painted in greens and yellows. The orange stands upright, retaining its stem and green leaves, and the lemon rests on its side. Arranged without pottery or a tablecloth, the grouping emphasizes the rustic simplicity of the farmhouse countertop, indicated by subtle strokes of red, with delightful accents of blue and violet for shadows.</p> |
| BF899 | <p>Like many of Renoir's paintings, <em>Bather and Maid</em> presents a fantasy of the female nude in perfect harmony with nature, free from the constraints of modern life. The subject looks totally at ease in her surroundings, sitting comfortably on soft fabric as an attendant combs out her long locks. Cast-off garments fill out the left foreground, heightening the contrast between the natural and the artificial, between the nude body and fussy modern attire.</p> |
| BF41 | <p>Cézanne returned to the Jas de Bouffan, near Aix-en-Provence, in 1890–91 after a vacation with his wife and son around Europe. During this time he painted a number of depictions of the surrounding landscape, including this picture, in which a house seems to disappear behind a wall of trees and reddish-orange earth.</p> |
| BF19 | <p>This view is of La Gaude, a French hilltop village in the Côte d'Azur nestled just north of Cagnes-sur-Mer, where Renoir lived and painted during the last decade of his life. The relaxed brushwork and warm palette of ocher and gold tones evoke the lush Mediterranean landscape. We can just make out the bell tower of the Church of Sainte Victoire de la Gaude rising over the cluster of native stone buildings with their terra-cotta-tiled rooftops.</p> |
| BF235 | <p>Cézanne painted <em>Terracotta Pots and Flowers</em> during the winter of 1891–92, in the greenhouse of his family estate in Provence. Geraniums and rhododendrons grow from the pots and rise to the top of the picture plane, as if toward pale winter sunlight. Their vertical network of leaves compresses the already shallow space; a single fallen bloom adds a note of melancholy. Here, Cézanne successfully translates a three-dimensional subject into a two-dimensional one while balancing lyrical movement with monumental nature.</p> |
| BF37 | <p>Vincent van Gogh probably met Joseph Étienne-Roulin, a postman at the Arles train station in the South of France, when the artist rented a room above the nearby Café de la Gare. The two shared similar left-leaning political views and became close friends; in fact it was Roulin who cared for Van Gogh during his hospital stay in nearby Saint-Rémy. Van Gogh painted six portraits of Roulin between 1888 and 1889 as well as several of Roulin's wife and children.</p> |
| BF24 | <p>A pomegranate and a handful of figs are strewn horizontally across this small oblong canvas. Renoir painted the fruits in rich and juicy strokes of red, purple, and green. Two of the figs are ripe to the point of bursting, almost inviting the viewer to pluck them out of the painting. They speak to the aged painter's desire to offer sensual pleasure through his paintings.</p> |
| BF957 | <p>A woman washes linen in a flower-filled garden. A child to her right, as if eager to help, tugs at the pail of suds. Washerwomen were popular figures in 19th-century art and literature. Manet's good friend Émile Zola, for example, described their tough lives in his novels. But this depiction is idyllic. Flashes of white paint —offset by grays and blues—become sunlight on the drying fabric. After the jury of the French Salon, the annual state art exhibition, rejected this painting, Manet exhibited it independently. </p> |
| BF239 | <p>These women are embroidering a tapestry, an artisanal practice that was quickly being replaced by the machine in industrializing 19th-century Europe. Renoir disdained modern technology. In his writings from the mid-1880s, he repeatedly condemns the regularizing effects of mechanization and its undermining of long-held values of craftsmanship.</p> |
| BF802 | <p>The subject of this portrait wears a double-stranded pearl necklace and a lace collar luminously articulated against her dark hair, dress, and background. She gazes directly at the viewer and smiles subtly. Her costume and hairstyle align closely with courtly circles in Tudor England, but the perspicuous detail speaks to French painting practice. The mysterious portrait was probably a commemorative or diplomatic gift indicative of a time when artists, works of art, and rulers circulated widely.</p> |
| BF871 | <p>This work depicts Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Virgin Mary, and is likely a fragment from an altarpiece dedicated to the life of the Virgin. While Joachim was fasting in the wilderness, an angel appeared to tell him that he and Anne, who had previously been unable to bear children, would have a child. He returned and met Anne at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, a scene that is often used an illustration of the Immaculate Conception, in which Mary was conceived without sin.</p> |
| BF775 | <p>This portrait's intimate scale and green background are characteristic of French Renaissance painter Corneille de Lyon. The naturalistic details of the sitter's hands resting on his belt and the hairs of his red beard are rendered through a technique of layering thin glazes made popular in France by the artist François Clouet. Born in the Netherlands, Corneille established an artistic practice in Lyon, which had developed into a major mercantile center, attracting artists of diverse nationalities as well as a bourgeois clientele.</p> |
| BF828 | <p>This small, gold-ground panel—most likely a fragment of a larger altarpiece—layers several episodes from Christ's Crucifixion at Golgotha (in Hebrew, "the place of the skull"). These are rendered in poignant detail and include the soldier piercing Christ's side with a lance, the group of antagonists gambling to claim his garments, Saint John the Evangelist comforting the Virgin Mary as she collapses in grief, and the Roman centurion Longinus (at center, in red) recognizing Christ's divinity. The frowning sun on Longinus's shield refers to the solar eclipse at the hour of Christ's death.</p> |
| BF782 | <p>This precious gold-ground panel shows the Virgin Mary and Christ Child enthroned between Saints Paul (left) and Peter (right). The way in which Mary and Christ embrace, with their faces touching, emulates certain Byzantine icons that highlight the Virgin's loving kindness and that were believed to be especially holy; the figures' attenuation and jewel-toned robes enhance the sacred aura. Originally, this panel was the left valve of a diptych whose right half showed the Crucifixion attended by the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and two grieving angels. The juxtaposition of Christ's infancy and death presented a poignant devotional platform for a pious individual.</p> |
| BF977 | <p>This work, attributed to the great Venetian painter Titian, was probably made for an aristocratic household for placement over a door. The subject is a pastoral landscape—an idyllic scene of rural life in which nature is presented as a comforting source of physical and spiritual sustenance. Note how the shepherd is cradled by his surroundings, with plentiful greenery for his plump goats. Pastoral scenes were popular in Europe in the early 16th century.</p> |
| BF865 | <p>When Albert Barnes acquired this portrait in 1929, it was believed to be a work by the Italian Renaissance painter Pinturicchio (d. 1513). However, details such as the sitter's haircut and the shape of his hat are not typical of Pinturicchio's era. A forger may have painted the fresco to sell in the art market, or it could have been made by a student attempting to learn Italian fresco technique.</p> |
| BF26 | <p>Renoir probably painted this small, hazy landscape in the vicinity of Les Collettes, where he moved in 1908. A stream runs along the front edge, echoed in the soft blue hills toward the back; swaying trees animate the space between. The painter treated such landscapes as a form of relaxation and an opportunity to experiment. He explained, "Landscape is useful for a figure painter. In the open air, one feels encouraged to put on the canvas tones that one couldn't imagine in the subdued light of the studio."</p> |
| BF57 | <p>This diminutive and intimate still life is among the first purchases of works by Cézanne that Albert C. Barnes made in 1912. This painting was once part of a larger still life; its six-and-one-half-inch height and the fact that the brushwork continues to the edges of the work suggest that it was cut down on all four sides. The original canvas was either one of Cézanne's horizontal compositions from the period or a collection of studies designed in advance to be cut down, possibly by the dealer Père Tanguy.</p> |
| BF309 | <p>Before the introduction of modern waste management, the streets of Paris often teemed with garbage. So-called ragpickers sifted through the urban detritus, scavenging for old fabric and other objects that could be resold. Bonnard depicts these denizens trudging along the muddy outskirts of the city. He separates his subjects from the throngs of city-dwellers in the background with an expanse of thick, sloppy brushstrokes. Isolated from the crowd, the ragpickers appear like outcasts, condemned to the liminal spaces of the metropolis.</p> |
| BF791 | <p>Although his birth name is not known, this artist had Flemish origins and was active in Spain, initially as a court painter of Queen Isabella of Castile and later mostly for church commissions. The sweeping mountainous landscape of this small <em>Crucifixion</em> suggests that Juan painted it in Castile—not for the queen or a church, but for the private devotion of the anonymous layman who kneels in prayer before Saint John the Evangelist. The astonishing detail of the scene—from the fur on the donor's robe and the buildings in the background to the blood running between Christ's toes—presents an opportunity to marvel at the wonders of Creation as well as at the artist's virtuosity.</p> |
| BF83 | <p>At the center of this gold-ground triptych, the dead Christ hangs on the Cross and bleeds from his side, hands, and knees. He is accompanied by the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist at left, and Saints Francis and Margaret kneeling at the foot of the Cross. The triptych's left wing is occupied by a Madonna and Child with two holy deacons holding books; the right shows Saints Dominic, Antony Abbot, and Christopher, who carries the Christ Child. This communion of saints does not readily suggest who may have commissioned the triptych—though its focus on mendicant friars, motherhood, and Christ's infancy suggests a few possibilities. Whatever the case, Christ and the saints offered focal points for prayers and meditations, and the act of opening and closing the wings provided further intimacy and drama. Some faithful in the 14th century even furnished their triptychs with curtains fringed with jingle bells, to add a sonic element to the process.</p> |
| A434 | <p>The virtue Fortitude, personified as a helmet-wearing maiden, wrests a dragon from a tower. She stands in a classical domed aedicule, offset by Gothic floral ornament. She is joined by three further virtues on the same wall: Love, Faith, and Prudence. These pieces may have come from a set of seven "theological" and "cardinal" virtues originally used to furnish a French Renaissance home.</p> |
| BF2544 | <p>The Paris-born artist Jean-Siméon Chardin was one of the most popular painters of genre scenes, or images of daily life, during the 18th century. His paintings were sought by aristocratic patrons from across Europe, and many were turned into engravings, which brought him an even larger audience. Chardin's fascination with genre scenes contrasted with the large-scale history paintings that were prized by the French academic painters and that were a staple of the annual Salon exhibitions. This painting depicts a washwoman drawing water from a large copper urn. The objects around the room refer to the many duties she and her companion in the background perform in the household. The pans and hanging carcass allude to cooking meals, the broom and firewood to cleaning and warming the house, and the child in the background to child minding.</p> |
| BF440 | <p>Based in Bruges, Hans Memling was primarily a painter of devotional artwork. Portraiture played an important role within this genre, however, as he had to capture the likenesses of saints and of the works' patrons. Memling painted about 30 individual portraits; this one, depicting an unknown sitter, was created by one of his followers. The background of waterways and lush countryside was a popular motif with Italian merchants and bankers working in the commercial city of Bruges.</p> |
| A435 | <p>The virtue Prudence holds a mirror, symbolizing reason and self-knowledge. She stands in a classical domed aedicule, offset by Gothic floral ornament. She is joined by three further virtues on the same wall: Love, Faith, and Fortitude. These pieces may have come from a set of seven "theological" and "cardinal" virtues originally used to furnish a French Renaissance home.</p> |
| BF961 | <p>One possible setting for this picture is Coney Island; it is similar to another painting, <em>Sitters by the Sea</em>, which is thought to have been inspired by scenes Avery observed there. Stylistically, the picture marks a shift in Avery's career toward flattened forms and blocky fields of color that would influence later generations of American abstract painters like Mark Rothko. Dr. Barnes purchased <em>The Nursemaid</em> during a visit to Avery's first one-man show at the Valentine Gallery in New York City in March 1935.</p> |
| BF316 | <p>Hans Baldung Grien was a German painter and printmaker who studied under Albrecht Dürer before distinguishing himself as one of the great artists of the Northern Renaissance. Baldung's striking <em>Madonna and Child</em> would have served as an aid to private prayer. The picture presents the Virgin Mary as both human mother and Queen of Heaven. She radiates an otherworldly spirituality, conveyed by her meditative gaze and the cool blue light of her halo. Note the artist's virtuoso depictions of her transparent veil and the translucent angel. This <em>Madonna and Child</em> is a replica of one of Baldung's early works, identical except that the Madonna wears an elaborate crown.</p> |
| A432 | <p>This carving personifies the virtue Charity as a maiden holding a heart. The figure stands in a classical domed aedicule, offset by Gothic floral ornament. She is joined by three further virtues on the same wall: Faith, Fortitude, and Prudence. These pieces may have come from a set of seven "theological" and "cardinal" virtues originally used to furnish a French Renaissance home.</p> |
| BF100 | <p>This painting is a scaled-down version of an enormous canvas—over 14 × 7 feet—that Puvis de Chavannes painted as part of a cycle of nine murals for the Boston Public Library. The series, the French artist's first and only commission in the United States, represents the spheres of human knowledge contained in the library's holdings. Here we see the Greek playwright Aeschylus reading the text of his tragedy <em>Prometheus Bound</em> while the climactic scene from the play unfolds behind him.</p> |
| BF773 | <p>Born in the Netherlands, Corneille became associated with Lyon, an important court center during the French Renaissance. The artist earned commissions to paint members of the French court, calling for a refined style. Here we find naturalistic details such as the sitter's translucent blue eyes and red beard. The subject's costuming—velvet doublet, feathered cap, and chained necklace with pendant—indicates both wealth and status. Corneille conveyed these fine details through the application of multiple layers of glazes.</p> |
| BF922 | <p>A woman in summer dress moves through a verdant landscape; a network of dappled rainbow brushstrokes unite figure and ground. Indeed, Renoir described his late-career ambition to merge his figures with their surroundings: "I'm struggling with my figures in order to make them one with the landscape that serves as their background," adding, "The artists of the past have never attempted this."</p> |
| BF917 | <p>Cézanne lived in the village of Gardanne in Provence with his wife, Hortense Fiquet, and their son from the summer of 1885 until the spring of 1886. The horizontal format of this painting allows for a panoramic view of the village that centers on the staggered, geometric structures of the orange-roofed houses. By setting the vantage point in the east, the artist was able to focus on the vertical nature of the terrain and highlight historical features such as the bell tower at center.</p> |
| BF90 | <p>El Greco's son, Jorge Manuel, who was known to work in the style of his father, probably painted this canvas. A reduced version of El Greco's original painting for the Cathedral of Toledo, it shows the dramatic moment before the Crucifixion when Christ's executioners strip him of his red robe. While one figure in the foreground prepares the cross, a mob, cast in darkness, eagerly anticipates the violence.</p> |
| BF876 | <p>Hyacinth, a Polish Dominican priest born in 1185, is said to have witnessed an apparition of the Virgin and Child on the feast day of the Virgin's assumption into heaven. Here, the mystical vision hovers in a burst of light and cloud before the enraptured priest. With one hand clutched dramatically to his chest, Hyacinth extends the other toward the viewer, almost as an invitation into the image. El Greco painted this canvas a few decades after Hyacinth was granted sainthood by Pope Clement VIII.</p> |
| BF557 | <p>Several figures sit and stroll under leafy trees, while a stately oceanfront house with green shutters and a terra-cotta-tiled roof is visible in the background. Behind them, the blue seawater sparkles in the sunshine. A pioneer of American modernism, Prendergast presents the scene as a network of high-keyed colors, blending sources ranging from medieval mosaics to recent depictions of the utopian Arcadia by French neoimpressionists.</p> |
| BF265 | <p>This painting was made for display in the nave of a parish church in Cologne, Germany. It is part of a cycle depicting the life of Saint Lawrence (d. 258 CE), who served as an archdeacon of Rome at a time when Christianity was not yet legal in the Roman Empire. This panel, the penultimate one in the series, depicts Lawrence's martyrdom. In the foreground, Emperor Decius has condemned the saint to die by roasting on a gridiron. Then, in the painting's right margin, his body is wrapped in a burial shroud and set upon a sarcophagus. At the top, two angels lift his soul—rendered as an infant to suggest his state of innocence—to Heaven.</p> |
| BF1144 | <p>The Milwaukee-born artist Karl Priebe often combined aspects of fantasy with his love of birding and depictions of African Americans. Here, a female figure holds a delicate wire on which two birds balance. Behind her is an eerie, moonlit landscape marked only by leafless trees and a smattering of rocky mountain peaks. Priebe, a white artist, lived in Chicago and was drawn to the city's African American community, where he befriended musicians and other artists who became subjects of his paintings.</p> |
| A433 | <p>The virtue Faith holds a chalice and wafer, a reference to the communion rite of the Mass. She stands in a classical domed aedicule, offset by Gothic floral ornament. She is joined by three further virtues on the same wall: Love, Fortitude, and Prudence. These pieces may have come from a set of seven "theological" and "cardinal" virtues originally used to furnish a French Renaissance home.</p> |
| BF147 | <p>The woman's red-toned flesh and pear-shaped figure are typical of Renoir's late nudes. She emerges playing castanets from under a frame of curtains topped with a garland of leaves. Women playing music were traditional motifs in decorative painting and architectural ornament; Renoir had previously painted a similar theme to decorate a room in a client's home. Although this work is small, the sculptural treatment of the figure gives it a monumental character. Indeed, Renoir designed a similar composition to be cast as relief sculpture.</p> |
| BF774 | <p>Born in The Hague, Netherlands, Corneille settled in Lyon, where he set up an artistic workshop. Lyon was one of the French court centers during the 16th century and would have provided Corneille with an ample supply of noble and bourgeois patrons. This small portrait format was in vogue at the time and was most likely meant for intimate viewing. The painting reflects the naturalistic tradition of Netherlandish painting as well as the simple, monochromatic background indicative of French-style portraiture.</p> |
| BF2545 | <p>Although French painter Jean-Siméon Chardin received the training of a formal history painter, he gravitated toward scenes of daily life. Once he was accepted into the French Academy in 1728, he showed still lifes and genre subjects at every annual Salon exhibition until his death in 1779. His paintings were popular among aristocratic, bourgeois, and royal collectors, and many were turned into engravings, which could be easily circulated. <em>Woman Doing Wash</em> depicts two domestic servants along with the child of their employer. Aristocratic viewers from Chardin's era may have been charmed by this shared moment between a child and his maid, but it is difficult as contemporary viewers to ignore the stark class differences on display.</p> |
| 01.03.11 | <p>These lidded pitchers, known as flagons, first appeared as household objects in Europe. By the 18th century, they were also being used in Christian churches to pour wine into chalices during Communion. The function of this particular flagon—whether secular or sacred—is unclear, but the dog, fleur-de-lis, and crown motifs were historically related to both the French and German royal courts.</p> |
| 01.03.12 | <p>A complex floral pattern threads its way around three sides of this sampler. The vibrant red flower buds contrast with the soothing green tones of the vines. The embroiderer who made this had to carefully count each stitch to ensure the meandering pattern remained even. If you look at the upper left-hand corner, you can see where the embroiderer miscounted and had to stretch the line to make the borders meet.</p> |
| 01.03.49 | <p>This miniature oak dresser was likely created as doll furniture for a child. During the 19th century, craftsmen used miniature furniture pieces as models to advertise their work; such items were placed in shop windows or carried by traveling salesmen as three-dimensional examples of the paper designs they also kept.</p> |
| BF1155 | <p>Between about 1875 and 1879, Cézanne began in earnest to paint compositions of bathers—male and female, single and in groups—in a landscape. He executed just over 30 bather paintings and a handful of watercolors during this time. This small canvas is the artist's first depiction of a single female nude by the sea. The composition is divided into three horizontal planes: sky, sea, and the grass. The youthful woman rests on a towel and is outlined in blue paint, her body strangely contorted as she stretches her arms. The slight diagonal slant of her pose invites the viewer to look toward the horizon.</p> |
| BF218 | <p>The landscape of Provence is scattered with defunct quarries like Bibémus, which has been abandoned since the 1830s. Cézanne produced many paintings and watercolors of the quarry's wild, overgrown landscape while he was renting a small shack on its outskirts. Here the orange stone of the hillside is visible peeking out among the abundant green pines.</p> |
| BF127 | <p>This picture of a water carrier reflects Daumier's interest in depicting workers of Second Empire Paris engaged in their daily tasks. As a caricaturist, he conveys the man's movement through a dynamic and simple outline; as a sculptor, he enhances the figure's monumental quality and strength with a skillful play of light and shadow. The precise rendering of the subject's posture, with the left arm outstretched to balance the heavy bucket, indicates that Daumier likely drew the sketch while looking out his studio window at the Quai d'Anjou.</p> |
| BF725 | <p>This portrait is of Narcisse Coqueret, a compass maker and an early collector of Monet's work. Coqueret had a factory near Vétheuil, a small town on the Seine River where Monet lived from 1878 to 1881; his acquisitions from the artist tended to be pictures of the local landscape. He commissioned this portrait in 1880, and Monet also painted a portrait of Coqueret's son, Paul.</p> |
| 01.08.46 | <p>The design of this ornate iron lock seems to be half architectural and half vegetal. Its rectangular body opens into a reverse-ogee arch at "top" (when installed on a door, the arch would have pointed right), and a small dome marks the site of the keyhole underneath. Vegetal interlace swirls over the lock's surface, extending into its three leaflike mounts. When Dr. Barnes displayed this lock in Room 8, he connected it functionally to a key and escutcheon; he also related the geometric qualities of these iron objects to those of Cézanne's Five Bathers just below.</p> |
| BF143 | <p>Edgar Degas had a subscription to the Paris opera, where he studied its corps of ballerinas, capturing them in intimate moments backstage—stretching, adjusting their costumes, rubbing their feet. Rather than duplicate the illusion of effortlessness seen onstage, Degas presents ballet as hard, grueling work. For these subjects, he often worked in pastel since the crayon's chalky texture was ideally suited to capturing the light, gauzy fabric of the tutus.</p> |
| BF107 | <p>Coveted for their charm, beauty, and nuanced expressions, Renoir's paintings of children typically portray their protagonists absorbed in music-making, flower-picking, writing, or reading. Beginning in the 1890s, Renoir painted an extended series of canvases showing two young girls in a variety of activities and surroundings. Their interactions underline their harmonious relationship and conform to idyllic images of childhood. The feathery cursive brushwork imparts a veil-like haze that heightens the sense of nostalgia.</p> |
| BF1189 | <p>The young female servant seen here carries a platter with what appears to be a gold goblet. In the background are blue walls, a purplish floor, a framed picture, and a black door that frames the servant's head and shoulders. The goblet and the halo effect created by the door—combined with a style that straddles Gothic glass and expressionism—reflect Rouault's belief in the inner light of society's undesirables, which he called "the least of these." He wrote in the 1930s: "A truth hidden at the core of our being sometimes makes us have a premonition of true beauty, true grandeur. The most noble subjects are humbled by a low spirit, while modest and simple realities are raised up and magnified."</p> |
| BF136 | <p>Van Gogh painted this landscape during the last year of his life, when he was a patient at an asylum in Saint-Remy, near Arles, in the South of France. With limited access to the outdoors, Van Gogh had to paint what could be seen out the window—or, as is the case here, what he could picture in his mind. This painting is a remembrance of his native Netherlands, showing the thatched cottages that dotted the Dutch landscape.</p> |
| BF910 | <p>Still life was a major preoccupation for Cézanne during the 1890s. He would take everyday household items—jugs, napkins, pieces of fruit—and arrange them in different combinations to study their forms and their relationships to each other. Here Cézanne captures the peaks and valleys of an ordinary napkin as if it is a rocky landscape spreading across the table. We seem to view the table from several perspectives at once, which brings a bit of tension, even motion, to these seemingly inanimate objects.</p> |
| BF208 | <p>Cézanne presents a panoramic view of L'Estaque, the southern coastal French town he visited throughout his life. The elongated perspective emphasizes the exaggerated horizontal orientation of the canvas and the town's hilly seaside terrain. Although it appears as if the artist is capturing the scene from the water, he likely painted it from one of the hills on the outskirts of the town.</p> |
| BF857 | <p>Painted a year before the first impressionist exhibition in Paris, this canvas has all the characteristics that would become associated with the movement. The loose brushwork —seen in the dog and at the scribble of foliage against the sky—suggests that Monet worked quickly and directly in front of his subject outdoors. The girl's fashionable outfit—a striped dress with layers of petticoats underneath, a bustle, and side-button boots—locates her in the contemporary moment. Monet likely painted this in Argenteuil, a small town outside Paris where he lived and worked for much of the 1870s.</p> |
| BF520 | <p>Two angels with outstretched wings guide a group of children, maidens, and youths through a hilly landscape with plenty of flowers. Gold gilt suffuses the entire image. Charles Prendergast, Maurice's younger brother, was a unique artist-craftsman whose production of gessoed, gilded panels set him apart from other artists of his generation. His panels expressed a broad spiritual sensibility, with sources drawn from a wide range of Eastern and Western traditions—early Italian, Persian, Chinese, Byzantine, Egyptian, Coptic, Roman, and Etruscan—which he freely interpreted according to his "fancy."</p> |
| 01.10.21 | <p>The three "tools" constituting this metalwork emblem are fused together, showing that it was designed to be decorative rather than functional. A compass, shaped as an inverted V, intersects with a 90-degree square. These tools are historically associated with the emblem of Freemasons: the square symbolized the true lines of virtue and the compass the circumscription of passions within due bounds toward mankind. The third, smaller tool is a twibil, used for timber joinery. Its presence probably means that this was an emblem for woodworkers rather than Freemasons, though it probably expressed similar symbolic values.</p> |
| 01.10.35 | <p>Iron is both extremely sturdy and light, which makes it ideal for tools that have tough jobs. This spatula would have been used in a kitchen where it was exposed to the intense heat of fires while turning food in a pan and scraping against the metal surfaces of other cooking tools. The person who owned this spatula would have relied on it daily and become familiar with the best way to use its size and shape to create delicious meals.</p> |
| 01.10.41 | <p>Iron is sturdy, lightweight, and malleable, which makes it ideal for tools that have tough jobs. This iron spatula has kept its shape over the centuries despite the scratches on its broad face, revealing where it received the most use. The smooth edges of the handle are the effects of being picked up continuously. The hook on its end meant it could be hung up when not in use to keep the cooking space organized.</p> |
| 01.08.49 | <p>Redware served a utilitarian, often domestic, purpose. Common forms include plates, jugs, creamers, and pots like this one. Potters often added decoration to liven the plain ceramic body. This vessel features cream, green, and brown slip in the flowers and squiggles. Because of its shiny lead-glaze surface, the otherwise porous redware was waterproof—perfect for storing liquids and food. Dr. Barnes seemed to enjoy American redware, given its frequent appearance in the ensembles.</p> |
| BF288 | <p>Not far from the looming presence of Cézanne's beloved Mont Sainte-Victoire, Renoir's laborers harvest olives from tuft-like trees in an orchard. Inspired by one of two visits to Aix-de-Provence, the canvas has a viewpoint consistent with the house near Bellevue that Renoir rented from Cézanne's sister and brother-in-law in 1889. Unlike Cézanne's depictions of the same site, Renoir's landscape is populated by protagonists who add a narrative dimension to the image. By setting off the mountain against the diminutive human figures in the foreground, Renoir seems to emphasize nature's sublime magnitude.</p> |
| BF33 | <p><em>Bouquet of Roses</em> is a good example of the continual slippage in Renoir's work between flower imagery and the female form. The painter once mentioned that a sketch of roses was "research of flesh-tones of a nude." At the bottom right of this picture is a small female face in profile, with the flesh painted in the same pinks and whites used for the flower petals.</p> |
| BF222 | <p>The son of a tailor, Renoir loved to depict the latest fashion trends. Here he presents a stylish woman wearing a high-collared dress, gloves, and an eye-catching hat. Despite the detailed presentation of the clothing, Renoir leaves the setting—and his sitter—largely undefined. The painting is done in a portrait format, and yet we are not sure who the woman is. Rather than a portrait of a specific person, Renoir has instead rendered a type—the modern Parisian woman.</p> |
| BF2077 | <p>Set at Saint-Malo in Brittany, France, <em>Beach and Village</em> features a crowded beach, blue and yellow beach cabins, and houses nestled into the hillside. In his many beach scenes Prendergast embraced both the timeless quality of the ocean as an artistic subject as well as its role in modern life. The water, land, and buildings emerge from nearly architectonic patches of color, evidence of his interest in adapting techniques from avant-garde French artists such as Paul Cézanne.</p> |
| BF596 | <p>As in many of his late landscapes, Renoir shows the central figure here in a contemplative state, seated among her natural surroundings. She doesn't even seem to notice the panorama beyond her. In his last years, Renoir spoke about his ambition to unify his figures with their surroundings: "I'm struggling with my figures in order to make them one with the landscape that serves as their background and I want people to feel that they are not flat, and that my trees are not flat either." Here, the gestural brushwork infuses the scene with a gentle rhythm in harmony with the sitter's repose.</p> |
| BF906 | <p>The blocky peak in the background, Mont Sainte-Victoire, towers over the Aix-Province region of France and appears in at least two dozen of Paul Cézanne's canvases. When Cézanne exhibited this painting at the third impressionist exhibition in 1877, critics were unkind. They complained about the aggressively strange anatomies—one figure's hands appear red and paw-like—and about the unclear relationships between the bathers, none of whom seem to interact.</p> |
| BF573 | <p>In May 1897 Toulouse-Lautrec moved to a new studio in northern Paris, which he hung with straw mats and furnished with a blue couch. This picture, painted just after the move, appears to be either a technical study of a reclining female figure or a workaday scene of a model posing in an artist's studio. The subject looks out beyond the left side of the composition with an impassive expression, making no eye contact with the viewer nor, presumably, with the artist. Toulouse-Lautrec, who favored redheaded models, contrasts the flaming color of her hair with the deep, cool tones of the couch.</p> |
| BF588 | <p>In his last years, Renoir spoke about his ambition to unify his figures with their surroundings: "I'm struggling with my figures in order to make them one with the landscape that serves as their background and I want people to feel that they are not flat, and that my trees are not flat either." In 1918, shortly before his death, he said, "At the moment, I am trying to merge the landscape with my figures. The artists of the past have never attempted this." The results of these efforts can be seen in the present canvas, where figure and foliage almost become one. Light, feathery brushstrokes create a diaphanous veil, lending this idyllic rural scene its dreamy atmosphere.</p> |
| BF232 | <p>In the early morning light, a woman has just gotten out of bed and is getting dressed. She stands awkwardly as one garment slips off while she tries to get another one on. Despite the mundane nature of this transitory moment, Renoir imbues this work with a sense of history. The voyeuristic subject of the <em>Lever,</em> or getting up, references 18th-century French rococo paintings of women glimpsed in the privacy of their bedrooms getting ready. This intimate work thus has an art historical lineage that belies its seemingly casual nature.</p> |
| BF322 | <p>Prendergast depicts the wide and tranquil beach of Revere, Massachusetts, setting groups of brightly dressed figures (one astride a donkey or mule) against the blue water. Rainbow-colored clouds and a few sailboats float across the canvas. A pioneer of American modernism, Prendergast presents the scene as a pattern of bright colors, blending sources ranging from Venetian Renaissance paintings to recent works by Cézanne and Matisse. His many paintings of crowded seashores reflect the increased leisure time afforded to working Americans as a result of recent labor reforms.</p> |
| BF324 | <p>With its picturesque vista and assemblage of light and textures, this composition demonstrates Pissarro's move toward impressionism. The intimate garden scene is set against a backdrop of small buildings. In the center, a figure strolls through the open, tree-lined space. Unlike many other impressionist canvases, however, this painting emphasizes the archetypally provincial qualities of Pontoise rather than its modernity. Pissarro omits, for instance, any references to labor or industry. He also avoids chromatic flamboyance in favor of more natural and muted tones.</p> |
| BF1040 | <p>Two ballerinas appear in a dimly lit offstage interior. The dancer in the foreground, depicted in profile, holds her head down and places a hand on her thigh—apparently lost in thought. The other turns away, perhaps dressing or undressing. Rouault's expressive style, evocative of Gothic stained glass, attests to his belief that dancers and other performers were spiritual mirrors for humanity. He once wrote, "This rich and glittering costume, it is given to us by life itself, we are all more or less [performers], we all wear a glittering costume."</p> |
| BF1035 | <p>Devoted to the close study of nature, landscape master Corot often painted <em>en plein air</em>, as he did for this quickly rendered oil on panel. Trees in the foreground are mere wisps of paint, clouds are brushed sketchily across the sky, and the figure in the center foreground is hard to make out.</p> |
| BF902 | <p>For the last decade of his life, Renoir lived and worked at Les Collettes, his estate in the South of France. Surrounded by olive trees and rolling hills, the property represented for Renoir a kind of preindustrial Eden, far removed from rapidly modernizing Paris. It was here that he produced this bathing group and countless other scenes of sensual nudes lounging in sun-dappled landscapes—fantasies of the female body in total harmony with nature.</p> |
| BF93 | <p>In the mid-late 1870s, Cézanne painted a series of small-format pictures of bathers in which he explored the different relationships between figures and the landscape. Here five bathers gather on a grassy knoll, framed by two trees in a stage-like presentation. Their poses draw from ancient Greek sculpture and other art historical traditions. The figures seem cut and pasted into the scene, as if Cézanne were toying with the conventions of Western art.</p> |
| BF2049 | <p>Picasso turned 19 on his first trip to Paris. An outsider in France, he embedded himself in a community of Catalan artists, intellectuals, and activists residing in Montmartre—a location indicated by the windmill in the upper-right corner of this panel. This bleak winter scene depicts the artist with five compatriots from his 1900 stay in the capital. The artist's best friend, Carles Casagemas, stares directly at the viewer, while his own face is shrouded, distinguished only by a checkered scarf. Two decades later, Max Jacob described Picasso at the outset of his career: "today a dandy . . . he was then a Spaniard with wide hat and enveloping coat."</p> |
| BF286 | <p>The vertical composition of this landscape emphasizes the steep rocky hill and tall pine trees. It was likely painted near the Château Noir, a neo-Gothic castle in Provence with views of Mont Sainte-Victoire, or within the forest of Fontainebleau, an area southeast of Paris. The rock-strewn hillside in this painting is made up of short "constructive" brushstrokes of green and orange, broken up by the gray, blue, and pink of the stone and its shadows, a style the artist developed by the late 1870s.</p> |
| BF34 | <p>Cézanne rented a small shack on the edge of Bibémus, a rock quarry to the east of Aix-en-Provence, around 1895. The quarry had been abandoned since the 1830s, providing the artist with a landscape of eroded geometric shapes. The vertical format highlights the hill on the left, leading gradually down into the overgrowth of a ravine and moving upward to the right, where a steep, sheer rock face displays the manmade changes to the landscape.</p> |
| BF366 | <p>Vuillard never married, and he lived with his mother, a seamstress, for her entire life. He often depicted his mother in his paintings. Here she sits sewing in their dining room, to the left of a table laid with blue-and-white dishes and a jug of flowers. Summarily painted with daubs of white and mauve, she almost looks like an extension of the tablecloth. Vuillard constructed both the tablecloth and the sideboard behind Mme. Vuillard from exposed ground. The tan paper support provides a neutral tone in the center of the room's bright red walls.</p> |
| 01.08.67 | <p>This crock was created around the end of the Civil War at a stoneware factory in Havana, New York. (The stamp of its maker, Whittemore Pottery, can be seen above the central figure's head.) Stoneware objects like this, often with hand-painted motifs, became popular in the late 19th century as storage containers for common household goods. This one depicts President Lincoln facing Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee with his mouth open as if to shout—perhaps illustrating the final result of the war.</p> |
| 01.08.51 | <p>This chest of drawers was made in the United States, probably in the Boston area, during the mid-18th century. The brass handles are original. Albert Barnes displayed this chest with modern French paintings—an unusual, ahistorical combination—to highlight the formal analogies between the objects. The chest has the same undulating curves as the Renoir nudes, as well the brownish-red tones of the two Cézanne landscapes.</p> |
| 01.09.40 | <p>In 18th-century households, candles were essential for everyday life. Candle making was a laborious endeavor, however, and they were expensive to buy. The most common candles at the time were made of tallow, a solid animal fat, which could soften or bend in the heat. Small boxes like this were used to store and protect candles against heat and pests. The construction and decoration of this box mimic that of larger Pennsylvania German blanket chests.</p> |
| 01.09.35 | <p>During the 18th and 19th centuries, wooden chests like this one were used in Pennsylvania German households to store personal items and documents. Note the painted columns on the front and sides. They evoke the more sophisticated chests produced for the upper classes in Renaissance Germany, which often featured elaborately carved architectural elements. </p> |
| 01.09.24a | <p>Andirons were typically manufactured in pairs and were used to hold logs in an open fireplace. They allowed air to circulate underneath a fire, creating a more efficient blaze and reducing smoke. Each of the andirons in this pair has many ornamental features clad in brass, including cabriole legs with spurs at the knees and finials composed of steeple-shaped shafts. The andirons' overall design combines architectural, anthropomorphic, and vegetal elements that complement other objects in the ensemble—such as the fictive architecture and floral motifs of the Pennsylvania German chest that they bracket.</p> |
| 01.09.24b | <p>Andirons were typically manufactured in pairs and were used to hold logs in an open fireplace. They allowed air to circulate underneath a fire, creating a more efficient blaze and reducing smoke. Each of the andirons in this pair has many ornamental features clad in brass, including cabriole legs with spurs at the knees and finials composed of steeple-shaped shafts. The andirons' overall design combines architectural, anthropomorphic, and vegetal elements that complement other objects in the ensemble—such as the fictive architecture and floral motifs of the Pennsylvania German chest that they bracket.</p> |
| 01.09.14ab | <p>Jean Renoir, son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made this ceramic pot in 1921, before he went on to become a famous film director. Jean made his pottery at Les Collettes, the Renoir family estate in the South of France; the elder Renoir had installed a kiln and encouraged his son to use clay from the surrounding fields. Albert Barnes bought 42 of Jean's pieces. </p> |
| BF531 | <p>Renoir's vase of cup-shaped anemones in pink, white, and red stands out against the neutral background. Visible swirls of paint define the silken petals, imparting a vitality to the cut blooms. From the 1860s to the 1880s, the artist relished in painting mainly bouquets of flowers but also occasional groupings of fruit and vegetables. Many of these were evidently made for sale on the commercial art market, but the informal quality and size of some examples indicate that they were painted for pleasure or technical practice.</p> |
| BF535 | <p>Disenchanted with urban life and contemporary subjects during the early 1880s, Renoir began to seek out new ways of integrating figures into rural settings. While he occasionally explored agricultural themes, more often he depicted figures at leisure. In his later work, the activities of the subjects—virtually always women—are more ambiguous. Sometimes we see women washing clothes in a stream, but frequently they are simply seated in their natural surroundings. The present canvas depicts a woman with a basket in hand while her companion rests on a grassy bank: prop and pose suggest that the two figures are harvesters.</p> |
| BF325 | <p>The subject of this painting is Robert Nunès, the son of the mayor of a small town on the Normandy coast in France. Dressed in a sailor-boy outfit—a popular costume at the time for children of the well-to-do—he strikes a confident, almost arrogant, pose. Renoir was also commissioned to paint a portrait of Robert's sister, and apparently the siblings were challenging subjects. In a letter written at the time, Renoir reported that he was "busy with two brats who make me furious."</p> |
| BF161 | <p>Renoir painted this canvas during the summer of 1886 in Brittany, and the conventional subject belies its importance as a crucial departure from the seeming spontaneity of impressionism. At this time, Renoir sought to fuse line and color seamlessly. Here, the figures are treated crisply and in considerable detail; strikingly, much of the foliage and fruit are outlined precisely in the underlying drawing and reinforced by additional contours on the finished layer. The palette, however, is consistent with Renoir's previous work, especially the juxtapositions between orange-reds and blue-greens.</p> |
| BF215 | <p>This study of trees was among the hundreds of paintings found in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Cagnes-sur-Mer studio after his death in 1919. Albert Barnes made a visit to the artist's studio in 1921 and later described it as one of the great experiences of his life. Like several of the small Renoirs in the collection, this painting was cut from a larger canvas containing multiple studies and then signed with an official "studio stamp."</p> |
| BF40 | <p>Depicted at a café table in a moment of quiet reverie, Renoir's model invites us to pause and imagine the swirls of chocolate and the gentle clanging of the spoon. The artist's training as porcelain painter shines through in the decorative flourishes on the cups. King Louis XVI popularized drinking chocolate at the court of Versailles, and in 1732, the first chocolate factory opened in Paris. Once reserved as a treat for the elite, chocolate became available to the masses in the 19th century because of improved labor conditions, mechanical advancements, and more efficient production methods.</p> |
| BF2540 | <p>Harry Sefarbi was a student at the Barnes in the late 1940s, and in 1953 he joined the permanent faculty, going on to teach the traditions of painting for the next 50 years. In a 1950 letter, Albert Barnes told Sefarbi that while he liked this painting of a man in a striped shirt sitting in a kitchen, he thought the colors were best viewed from afar. Perhaps this is why Barnes chose to hang it above the doorway.</p> |
| BF241 | <p>A rare depiction of grapes in Cézanne's body of work, this small still life presents a closeup view of a simple subject. Cézanne outlined each grape in blue and shaded the modest white plate with bluish green strokes. This painting was cut from a larger canvas that featured other small unrelated sketches. As in his drawing practice, where he would rotate his sheet to study different motifs, Cézanne treated his composite canvases as spaces of formal investigation.</p> |
| BF711 | <p>Cezanne's friend Émile Zola, a writer, defined a work of art as "a corner of nature seen through a temperament." <em>A Table Corner</em> witnesses Cézanne's intent to paint his immediate sensations of things, rather than their objective reality. The artist allegedly said that he saw the planes of objects overlapping; here, he achieved this effect partly by rhythmically arranging warm- and cool-colored fruits on the tabletop and a white plate. Note how the artist demarcates the slashed pomegranate from its neighboring fruits by a seemingly solid shadow; the folding screen reiterates the table's corner while also disturbing the spatial relationships between itself, the table, and the wall.</p> |
| BF44 | <p>Cézanne painted this still life of a richly colored pitcher of flowers in his studio. The work shows the artist's deft use of studio props. The patterned drapery colored in green, red, and orange and hanging to the left is actually a carpet. The foliated curtain, which disappears behind the table to the right, appears in other still lifes by the artist. The white milk pitcher at the center of the painting, with its floral decoration, is also a studio favorite, seen in a painting in room eight.</p> |
| BF966 | <p>A Charentais melon and an assortment of peaches and figs rest on a white cloth. Renoir arranged the fruits for maximum visual delectation, and their ripe flesh arouses tactile desire in a similar manner as his nudes.</p> |
| BF577 | <p>Cézanne inherited the compositional device of situating a still life on the corner of a table from 17th-century Dutch painting. The motif can be also seen in the repeated efforts of Henri Fantin-Latour and his 19th-century contemporaries. The present canvas is unusual both in its plain, quickly executed dark background and in the curious pyramid of foliage that forms an apex at the upper center of the composition. Except for the plate of peaches, the composition is made of disjunct parts that do not come together as a whole.</p> |
| BF900 | <p>A rosy, diaphanous veil appears to be cast over this nearly monochromatic canvas. Renoir frequently painted solitary women absorbed in domestic activities such as sewing, as seen here, and knitting, and he often set them against a vague background. This type of portraiture of women at work pays homage to the real-life activities illustrated in 17th-century Dutch genre painting. At the same time, for Renoir there is always an ideal at work. As gender roles became increasingly destabilized in France, paintings such <em>Woman Sewing</em> reassert a traditional vision of feminine domesticity.</p> |
| BF2506 | <p>In preparation for <em>A Sunday on La Grande Jatte</em> (Art Institute of Chicago; 1886), Seurat made frequent excursions to this island spot in the river Seine. Unlike the final painting which features the artist's renowned pointillist technique of unmixed complementary colors, this oil study, one of 24 made in preparation, was executed quickly using crisscross brushwork and color likely mixed on the palette. Among the few elements seen here that appear in <em>A Sunday on La Grande Jatte</em> are the tree with a bend in its trunk at left, the dark green shadows reaching toward the river, and the little girl in white. </p> |
| BF372 | <p>In <em>Central Park</em>, adults and children ride horses, watch miniature sailboats, and climb gray-and-gold striped rocks on a spring day in the 1930s. Blossoming cherry trees and high-rises with waving flags define the cityscape. The style and technique of Charles Prendergast's gilded, gessoed panel refers principally to medieval sacred painting in Italy and Byzantium, a result of the artist's earlier involvement in the Arts and Crafts movement. Indeed most of Charles's paintings at the Barnes Foundation belong to his early "celestial" period; but <em>Central Park</em> represents his latest "modern" phase (from 1932), dedicated to spectacles of entertainment in contemporary America.</p> |
| BF1184 | <p>Caught in the middle of his creative process, the artist in this painting stands before his easel in contemplation. The solitary, uncertain figure likely represents Daumier himself and serves as allegory on the theme of the crises faced by the modern artist. The bare background further emphasizes the isolation of the figure, and the unseen picture on the canvas provides an added sense of mystery.</p> |
| BF121 | <p>Degas captures three ballerinas backstage during a performance. One rubs her foot while the others crowd around; bright stage lighting falls on their bare arms and shoulders. The three overlapping bodies and their gauzy tutus fill the space of the composition, merging into a field of electric yellow. Degas had a subscription to the Paris ballet, which allowed him behind-the-scenes access. He studied dancers intently and revealed the art form as grueling physical labor.</p> |
| BF213 | <p>Drawing was essential to Degas's artistic practice. Here strong lines of charcoal with minimal additions of pastel define three dancers with overlapping arms and tutus. The radical cropping and clustering of the figures—only one face, in profile, is visible to the viewer—reveals Degas's photographic eye. Indeed, Degas owned a camera by the mid-1890s, but there is no evidence that he used photography in the making of this work.</p> |
| BF932 | <p>Andrée Heuschling, known as Dédée at the time, was Renoir's last model. She posed for him from 1917 to 1919 in many different settings, costumes, and states of dress. The teenage Dédée inspired a final prolific period of painting for the aging, arthritic artist. Renoir enthused that her skin "took the light" better than any other model. Here she poses for him in a traditional scene of a woman reading; he complements her rosy skin with a pink robe and flowered hat set against a green-tinted background.</p> |
| BF894 | <p>In the summer of 1920, Matisse took his wife, Amélie, and his daughter, Marguerite, to the resort town of Étretat in Normandy, where they rented a room in a beachfront hotel. There, he developed his interest in landscapes and still-life painting. Recalling marine scenes by Courbet and Monet, Matisse's canvas similarly highlights the white cliffs and shows a concern with representing the fluid climate of the Atlantic shore. In displaying an interest in changing conditions, Matisse deviated from his earlier rejection of the impressionist and naturalist zeal for fleeting, atmospheric effects.</p> |
| BF137 | <p>Early in his career, before he found a real market for his work, Renoir made ends meet by painting portraits for the elite of the Paris art world. Seen here is Delphine Legrand, the daughter of the art dealer Alphonse Legrand, who helped mount the second impressionist exhibition in 1876. Renoir's depiction of Delphine's bright blue dress exemplifies the radical brushwork introduced by the impressionists: brushstrokes are lively, moving in different directions, each one visible and unblended.</p> |
| BF231 | <p>One of two paintings by the impressionist artist Alfred Sisley in the Barnes collection, this image depicts the bridge that spans the Seine River in the Parisian suburb of Sèvres. Throughout his career, Sisley painted landscapes on site, drawing on his direct observations of nature.</p> |
| BF935 | <p>In this charming portrait Renoir depicts his youngest son and one of his favorite subjects, Claude, or "Coco," born in 1901. The artist's oldest son, Jean, once said that "Coco certainly proved one of the most prolific inspirations my father ever had." Indeed, Renoir captured Claude in at least 90 canvases—three of which belong to the Barnes Foundation. Unlike other Renoir portraits, which often depict children engaged in activity, this example shows a perfectly poised and patient sitter.</p> |
| BF904 | <p>Matisse depicted these fishing boats during a summer he spent in Étretat, on the north coast of France. Painted with quick, broad strokes, the small work was likely created by the artist on the spot. Étretat was famous for its white cliffs and rock formations, which Claude Monet had depicted. While the rock arch known as the Porte d'Aval is visible in the center background, Matisse focuses here on the contrasting black strokes and the rhythm of the masts across the canvas.</p> |
| BF730 | <p>The figure in the boat is the artist, Claude Monet, who outfitted this floating studio with all his supplies so that he could paint from the middle of the water. Often Monet would anchor his boat when working. But sometimes he painted as he drifted down the river, creating landscapes that are really more a collection of momentary glimpses rather than a depiction of one specific spot.</p> |
| BF196 | <p>During his early Nice period, Matisse renewed his interest in landscapes. With their small formats and naturalistic effects of light and shadow, these works reflect the influence on impressionism on the artist. Matisse likely painted this view of <em>la villa bleue</em> on Mont Boron, where he moved after his living quarters were twice requisitioned for the housing of soldiers during World War I. The artist later recalled that these landscapes, which he typically completed in two or three sittings, helped to occupy him while he was waiting for news from the front, where his son Jean was serving in the French army.</p> |
| BF458 | <p>Picasso presents an egg cup on a saucer and vertically stacked cigars, arranged on the marble surface of what may be a café table. Colorful geometric shapes interpenetrate these items: a pink triangle, a blue oval, a purple-and-aqua teardrop, and a dark, shadowy form. The still life dates to Picasso's Crystal Period, in which he produced gemlike paintings amid the "return to order" that followed the chaos of World War I.</p> |
| BF548 | <p>Red and purple anemones burst from a floral-patterned glass vase standing on a hazy purple ground. Some blossoms are offset by the creamy white ground visible around their edges and others by a soft black outline. A streak of white on the right side of the vase's stem suggests that light may enter from this direction, but the floating quality of the vase in space, as well as the opalescent color, probably allude to floral still lives painted by Odilon Redon. Shortly after moving from Paris to Nice, where he painted <em>Bouquet of Anemones</em>, Matisse remarked that he had begun to use subdued colors and tones of black and gray as a way of searching for something new in his art.</p> |
| BF212 | <p>This small canvas belongs to a series of nude figures in wooded landscapes that Matisse made during the summer of 1906, his second summer at Collioure, a town on the Mediterranean coast of France. Traditionally, artists depicting human figures sought to create the illusion of volume through the use of light and shade. Yet Matisse completely departs from that convention here. The body is composed of flat patches of clashing color; its edges are jagged or altogether absent.</p> |
| BF905 | <p>The young sitter portrayed here is Janine, the daughter of Jean Chaurand-Naurac, a friend of Matisse's and like him, a former student of Gustave Moreau. As Janine's mother was ill and her father had left to join his regiment during the war, Matisse welcomed her into his home. In line with his other portraits of children, Matisse's priority was not resemblance to the sitter but a psychological description. Here, Janine looks older than in a contemporary drawing and photograph and bears a slight expression of surprise.</p> |
| BF2548 | <p>Afro Basaldella was an Italian painter active mainly in Venice and Rome. He employed a semiabstract, openwork version of cubism in <em>The Novice</em>, whose title may refer to a newcomer to a religious order, an academic discipline, or a type of craft. This image is representative of Afro's syntheses of cubism with metaphysical mysticism during the late 1940s (a mode of painting that he called "abstract-surrealism"). The display of <em>The Novice</em> amid paintings by Picasso, Braque, and de Chirico alludes to some of Afro's inspirations and artistic affinities.</p> |
| BF1156 | <p>Soutine presents a man with a turnip-shaped head wearing a small white hat. The figure's black, high-collared coat emphasizes the strange contours of his face. One eyebrow is arched, giving him an air of thoughtfulness. Albert Barnes may have placed The White Hat on this wall to demonstrate how artists distort their subjects to express emotion. Compare, for example, Soutine's white-hatted man to the icy countenance of the sitter in Redheaded Girl in Evening Dress (1918) by Modigliani.</p> |
| BF358 | <p>Matisse probably painted this canvas during the first of two visits that he made with his wife, Amélie, to Toulouse in 1898 and 1899. During his stay in Toulouse, he painted several landscapes of the suburbs of Beauzelle and Fenouillet, in which he continued his engagement with impressionism. The Toulouse landscapes, such as this one, exhibit a drastic change in how the artist used and selected color—a change that was instigated by his reading of Paul Signac's treatise <em>D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme</em>, which advocated the expressive use of color and brushstrokes.</p> |
| BF1170 | <p>A nude woman wearing a blue beaded necklace and a golden bracelet sits on an aqua sofa. Brown, gridded wallpaper and an undulating fireplace mantelpiece dominate the room. At the time of painting, Matisse was engrossed in applying new techniques from his <em>Dance</em> mural (1930–33) to the themes of the odalisque and decorative interiors. He compared painting to the game of chess, where the overall objective remains the same, but the appearance of the board changes during play.</p> |
| BF206 | <p>Modigliani's portrait of an unidentified sitter, with her vivid hair and strapless dress, suggests how women's lives had changed by the early 20th century. Draping her shoulder over the chair, she addresses the viewer with an unapologetic gaze. Her revealing dress shows how bold new fashions could represent a form of freedom. Modigliani used a thick round brush to describe the model's flesh, and the textured surface seems to invite touch.</p> |
| BF956 | <p>Matisse probably executed this painting executed in one session, as recorded by his assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya, who posed for the picture. The blue couch and the model's body are composed of thin washes. The artist has left the ground layer exposed in areas like the right edge of the composition, where the model's proper left hand would have been. Flecks of thicker impasto animate the patterned cushion on which she leans. Matisse has balanced the curves of the reclining nude with the tiled wall behind her.</p> |
| BF275 | <p>During the rapidly modernizing 19th century, cities like Paris became plagued by loud noises, crime, bad air, diseases, and bustling crowds. As a result, the bourgeois interior gained importance as a place of refuge. Pierre Bonnard delighted in domestic scenes, producing countless representations of his friends and family enjoying activities like reading, sewing, and looking at prints. Here Bonnard focuses on the decorative qualities of his subject, covering his canvas in rhythmic patterns of color and light.</p> |
| BF460 | <p>In Still Life with Lemon, the transparency of the glass, the sparkle of the spoon,and the acidity of the lemon appeal to the senses of sight, touch, and taste. In focusing on the world of the senses, Matisse carries on a long tradition in painting devoted to this theme. Here he seems to be alluding to 17th-century Dutch and Flemish still lifes, which are known for capturing the sheen and texture of objects.</p> |
| BF430 | <p>Braque made this work in the early years of cubism, a painting approach he and Picasso developed together. The only clearly recognizable object in this still life is the pitcher at center, whose sides are made up of facets of color that fracture and radiate outward. The grouping of brushstrokes into geometric shapes reflects the renewed interest in the work of Cézanne, which was celebrated in Paris at a monumental retrospective held in 1907.</p> |
| BF133 | <p>Toulouse, in the South of France, this color study speaks to Matisse's engagement with Paul Signac's written account of the legacy and practice of pointillism, <em>From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-impressionism</em>, which appeared in serial form in 1898. Matisse grappled with Signac's divisionist theory of color contrasts. This ultimately evolved into Fauvism and the artist's unique approach to color application, focusing on bold planes of color rather than systematized dots or dashes.</p> |
| BF84 | <p>Painted during Matisse's second summer in Collioure, this study likely pictures the artist's wife, Amélie, posing in a nearby wood, the Bois de Py. Working directly from nature and the model, Matisse captured the warm light of the Mediterranean sea town, using vibrant hues and minimal tonal variation. Amélie wears a colorful Japanese-style robe, set off by areas of yellows and greens to signal foliage and woods. Matisse uses white to indicate sunlight hitting her face and the light ground of the canvas to separate colors.</p> |
| BF35 | <p>This small sketch is one of numerous studies and preparatory drawings that Matisse executed while working on his seminal painting <em>Le Bonheur de vivre</em>, also in the Barnes's collection. It shows the artist working out the color relationships, balancing the bright oranges and yellows with cooler green-blue tones. Though the sketch is very roughly blocked out, many of the compositional elements are already in place. The two central reclining nudes, for example, are suggested by fleshy pink smears of paint, both thickly outlined in dark green, with daubs of orange and blue-black indicating the figures' hair.</p> |
| BF923 | <p><em>Reclining Odalisque</em> involves a deliberate tension between the sculptural quality of the figure and the geometric ground. The volumes of the figure's body are almost literally built up with the palette knife. The space around her sofa, though, is composed of a gray-and-green grid and a bright orange triangle with a purple hypotenuse. These forms differentiate this odalisque from others that Matisse painted in 1927–28, all of which pose in settings decorated with curvilinear arabesques.</p> |
| BF546 | <p>After World War I, Braque and Picasso never resumed the close artistic collaboration that had resulted in the development of cubism. Here Braque continues to explore the cubist emphasis on the two-dimensional surface of the canvas. Using typical objects of the still-life tradition—glass, fruit, tablecloth, and knife—Braque achieves a shallow space, flattening and overlapping the presented items.</p> |
| BF547 | <p>Braque's early training in decorative arts is apparent in his use of varying textures in this still life. The green-and-white pattern references a wallpaper design, and the addition of sand to wet paint gives a matte quality to the picture surface. His "faux" effects also recall the multimedia collage approach of synthetic cubism, developed by Picasso and Braque, though the only materials used here are paint and sand.</p> |
| BF916 | <p>Henri Matisse's love of decoration is evident here, as the patterned tablecloth and wallpapers flow together into a dizzying composition that almost crowds out the figures. The dark-haired model is Henriette Darricarrère, an aspiring actress and dancer who posed frequently for Matisse during the 1920s.</p> |
| BF318 | <p>In turn-of-the-century Paris, once-fixed signifiers of identity and meaning were increasingly unstable, and this painting captures the ambiguities of modern life. With her cigarette and yellowing skin, the weary subject has been characterized as a diseased prostitute, but Picasso renders her without eroticism and covers her to the chin. While she sits tall and openly faces the viewer, her wrapped arms communicate withdrawal and enclosure. The flat orange plane registers as a skirt, complementary in color to the blue top, yet it could also be read as a café table. From the start of his career, Picasso embraced indeterminacy in both content and form.</p> |
| BF195 | <p>A model reclines cozily, legs crossed, on a magenta sofa. She's posing as an odalisque in an "oriental" costume of baggy red trousers, a white-and-gold head cover, and three green rings. The room is a riot of decorative patterns: spotted mauve curtains around a shuttered French window, brown arabesques on a pink field, green flowers on an orange field, and a purple-and-pink grid of tiles. Matisse adopted the theme of the odalisque from Delacroix and Renoir, and he intended to create an atmosphere of well-being and reverie for the spectator.</p> |
| BF893 | <p>A departure from Matisse's single figures in interior spaces of this period, this landscape presents two women relaxing in the countryside near Nice, in the South of France. The canvas's debt to impressionism can be seen in the subject of outdoor leisure, the rapid execution, and the treatment of light and atmosphere. In 1918 and 1919, Matisse made visits to the great impressionist master Renoir at his home at Les Collettes, not far from Nice. At the time, the aging artist was working on <em>The Bathers</em> (1918–19; Musée d'Orsay, Paris), a large-scale painting of two nude women lying in an idyllic landscape.</p> |
| BF880 | <p>This interior nude bears the formal and thematic characteristics of Matisse's early Nice period: spatial illusionism, a muted palette, and a female model presented in an intimate environment. The rapid paint handling and evidence of reworking imbue the canvas with an improvisatory quality that recalls the freshness of a sketch. The model's facial characteristics are rendered only schematically. Matisse focuses on formal concerns such as the contrast between the curving, arabesque forms of the woman's body and the more rigid geometry of squares and rectangles on the rug.</p> |
| BF283 | <p>The miniature dimensions of <em>Two Figures</em> contrast with the heroic massiveness of its subjects, who recline on a beach. Picasso may have painted this scene while staying with his family at the seaside town of Fontainebleau. At the time, he was exploring the expressive qualities of classical art, and the figures' monumentality probably traces to statuary and frescoes that he had studied in Italy. Yet he transformed his sources through a uniquely personal interpretation.</p> |
| BF1016 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Saint James, one of the twelve apostles, is shown here riding a horse and brandishing a sword—a reference to his appearance at the mythical Battle of Clavijo, where he was said to have helped a Christian army defeat the Moors.</p> |
| BF886 | <p>Born in Lithuania, Soutine emigrated to Paris in 1913 and settled in the bohemian neighborhood of Montparnasse. The identity of his sitters is rarely known, but we can assume they were friends or acquaintances who posed for free; Soutine was desperately poor. Like many of his portraits, this one has a searing psychological intensity. Thick, gestural brush strokes create a distorted body and spectacularly talon-like hands; black eyes stare out from a face swirling with green, orange, and blue.</p> |
| BF72 | <p>This melancholy figure is likely part of a troupe of saltimbanques, traveling performers who held shows at fairs and other makeshift venues. In visual art, saltimbanques often appear as a metaphor for artistic struggle. When he was relatively new to Paris, and trying to make his name, Picasso produced many works on this theme. The color in these pieces is typically subdued, although the watercolor has also faded here.</p> |
| BF73 | <p>Matisse lived in the seaside town of Collioure, on the southwest coast of France, for a year and a half in 1906–7. He painted this picture directly from nature, positioned in the hills above the picturesque town, capturing the landscape and the Mediterranean beyond it. He left parts of the canvas bare to convey the intense luminosity of the scene; the exposed ground heightens the pinks, oranges, violets, and blues of his palette.</p> |
| BF204 | <p>Matisse often used members of his family as models for his paintings. Here he depicts his daughter, Marguerite, resting on a haystack; she is recognizable by the black ribbon around her neck, which she wore to hide scars from a surgery. Matisse painted this while he was living in Nice in the South of France. As in many of his canvases from the Nice period, this one seems to straddle the portrait and landscape genres.</p> |
| BF891 | <p>When Matisse painted <em>The Green Dress</em>, he had recently returned to the city of Nice and taken a new model, Antoinette Arnaud. Here we see Arnaud from above, looking directly at us from a casual seated position; she rests one foot on a chaise longue, where she has discarded her black stockings, and the other on a Moroccan footstool. The footstool, Arnaud's turban, and her billowing green gandoura are "oriental" elements that hint at the theme of the odalisque, which Matisse pursued more fully from 1920.</p> |
| BF207 | <p>This study is one of hundreds Picasso made for <em>Les Demoiselles d'Avignon</em> (1907; Museum of Modern Art, New York) and corresponds with the nude on the far left of the final composition. Here, the figure's rigid posture and strict profile, delineated with crude black contour, contrast with the dynamic mark-making in the patterned curtain at left, while the juxtaposition of peach and deep salmon tones in the body shows Picasso experimenting with a disjunctive approach to form.</p> |
| BF205 | <p>A bouquet of rainbow flowers and long green leaves emerges from a ceramic pitcher, which sits on a windowsill. The flowers seem to include daises, roses, carnations, and perhaps gladioli—but Matisse has abstracted them into patches and arabesques of jewel-like color. <em>Flower Piece</em> studies the expressiveness of color and the effects of light, both as it falls on the object from an exterior source and as it emanates from the light-colored ground of the canvas.</p> |
| BF177 | <p>Painted in Madrid, this panel belongs to a genre of painting popularized in 19th-century France by Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt. The setting of a "loge" or a theater box became a microcosm for exploring the social circuits of looking: at the theater, the line between audience and stage performer easily blurs. While Picasso exaggerates the scale and ornamentation of the woman's costume, the shadowy presence of a man at left is integral to the composition.</p> |
| BF955 | <p>Between January 22 and 26, <em>Reclining Nude with Blue Eyes</em> went through four different states. The different states replaced one another on the same canvas, but each could have been conceived as a finished painting in itself. Matisse encouraged this view in permitting and even promoting their reproduction.</p> |
| BF292 | <p>Best known for his figure painting, Amedeo Modigliani saw himself principally as a sculptor, which is evident in his sculptural treatment of the human figure in his paintings and drawings. He created more than 70 depictions of caryatids, sculptural female figures used traditionally as architectural supports for a temple, in a variety of media, reflecting his interest in the sculpture of Africa, ancient Greece, and Southeast Asia.</p> |
| BF1025 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Here the archangel Saint Michael battles evil, represented by a monster at his feet, while he weighs the souls of the recently departed on a balance.</p> |
| BF437 | <p>In 1908, the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term cubism upon seeing works by Georges Braque in which he responded to Paul Cézanne's landscapes. Here Braque deployed the characteristic brown-and-gray palette favored by the cubists, as well as touches of green and yellow, to give shape to the two pears. While the space of the picture is shallow, emphasizing its two-dimensionality, the subject of this still life remains recognizable, a common feature of early cubist works.</p> |
| BF340 | <p>This painting's title refers to a troupe of British dancers who became famous performing synchronized routines in New York City theaters around the turn of the 20th century. Glackens, who lived in New York for many years, painted this canvas in his Washington Square studio. One critic described seeing it there in 1910: "Glackens has in his studio . . . a large canvas, a study of some girls, possibly vaudeville 'artistes,' on which he daily practices his colored scales, trills and arpeggios."</p> |
| BF360 | <p><em>Tulips in a Green Vase</em> is a radical American adoption of Fauvism, painted when Maurer was living in France. His streamlined image of two red tulips in an aqua pitcher, two wedge-shaped pieces of bread, and a blue cloth presents not only a jarring chromatic symphony, but also the transformation of a still life into abstract symbols. Influenced by artists like Matisse, Cézanne, and Degas, as well as the philosopher Henri Bergson, Maurer sought to paint through his emotional responses to his subject—to convey the essences of things, his relationship with them, and their relationships with each other.</p> |
| BF758 | <p>This watercolor sketch shows two sphinxes in profile, one above the other. The lower one wears a white dress, while the upper is nude and rests her hands on what appears to be a boulder; each register is signed and dated "Lenna 1922." The artist was the daughter of William Barnes's dear friend William Glackens, whose <em>Race Track</em> (1908–9) on the adjacent wall had sparked Barnes's career as a collector. The ponytails worn by Lenna's sphinxes remind viewers that she was only nine years old when she created them.</p> |
| BF2553 | <p>The elongated face and oversized eyes of this small wooden relief sculpture appear throughout the art history, going as far back as ancient Mesopotamia. Albert H. Nulty, a talented craftsman who held a number of positions from chauffeur to conservator during his long tenure at the Barnes Foundation, made this piece around 1940. Nulty also played an instrumental role in the installation of Henri Matisse's <em>Dance</em> mural in the main gallery.</p> |
| BF389 | <p>Here the Canadian-born Lawson presents a rural scene of Upstate New York, his adopted home. The white clapboard cottage is nestled among rocky hills and writhing, curvilinear trees, bare of leaves, suggesting winter or perhaps early spring. A pale green field stretches into the distance; purple haze suffuses the distant mountains. Lawson's rugged application of pigment, rhythmic forms, and vivid colors were inspired partly by the works of the French painters Alfred Sisley and Paul Cézanne.</p> |
| BF985 | <p>An African American artist from West Chester, Pennsylvania, Horace Pippin took a class here at the Barnes in 1940. That same year he traveled throughout the country painting landscapes and scenes from the lives of African Americans. This work, showing a humble family in an interior, may have been made on that trip. Pippin often painted on wood, carving his composition with a hot poker before adding color.</p> |
| BF229 | <p>Julies Mordecai Pincas called himself Pascin—an anagram of his surname. Born in Bulgaria, Pascin lived in Paris between 1905 and 1914, where he was a member of the group of avant-garde writers and artists who congregated in bohemian Montparnasse—a group that included Ernest Hemingway and Amedeo Modigliani. Pascin is known for his drawings and paintings of women, often fully or partially nude, most of whom were part of his Montparnasse circle.</p> |
| BF986 | <p>Horace Pippin's <em>Christ and the Woman of Samaria</em> depicts the Gospel story in which a member of the Samaritan people—who did not ordinarily mix with Jews—recognized Jesus as the Messiah while drawing him water from a well (John 4). Pippin's composition draws from Renaissance examples, but other elements, such as the protagonists' candid confrontation and the clash between the fuchsia sky and the darkened tree line, are daringly modern. The dark skin of Christ and the Samaritan woman may reflect an attempt at historical accuracy as well as an allusion to the gospel song "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well" or to African American spirituality more generally.</p> |
| BF216 | <p>A few figures, probably fishermen, wade amid rowboats or crouch at the water's edge. On the distant shore, clapboard houses nestle between trees and hills, and the scene's cool light suggests the coming of evening or autumn. Dr. Barnes wrote that "<em>Marblehead Harbor</em> represents the height of [Prendergast's] powers in achieving a design by means of his own technique... As a result, the whole canvas is a succession of contrasts of line, color, mass and spatial relations, that give rise to a series of rhythms comparable to those of a Bach fugue." This was the last work he acquired by Maurice Prendergast.</p> |
| BF990 | <p>Pippin represents a family bowing their heads in prayer prior to sharing a meal. The table and two chairs at the center of the composition connect the center of the space to the sleeping area and kitchen, all of which are contained in the log cabin's single room. The depiction of wood grain in the texture of the walls and furniture stems from Pippin's earlier technique of directly painting and etching wooden panels, as we see in the nearby picture <em>Supper Time</em>.</p> |
| BF105 | <p>Philadelphia native William Glackens is best known for his work as a member of the Eight, a New York-based group that focused on gritty scenes of urban life and pushed against the conservatism dominating American painting. Glackens was also one of Albert Barnes's closest friends; the two were schoolmates at Philadelphia's Central High during the 1880s. Painted when the artist was 38, this self-portrait reflects Glackens's study of French impressionism: each of the animated brushstrokes is visible and moving in a different direction.</p> |
| BF291 | <p>An orange begonia in a terracotta pot tangles with a blue background. Note the solid-looking shadow of the pot and plant, and the nimbus of sapphire blue around the blossoms. <em>Pot of Flowers</em> dates to Maurer's Fauve period, when he was integrating Cézanne's structural approach with Matisse's emotive use of gemlike colors; his goal was to express the subject's spirit and his sensations of it. Maurer was also inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson's concept of <em>élan vital</em>, the "vital impetus" of nature in operation beyond surface appearances.</p> |
| BF439 | <p>Born in Bulgaria, Pascin moved to Paris in 1905, drawn to the cosmopolitan artistic scene of the Montparnasse and Montmartre neighborhoods. His favorite subject was the female nude, depicting prostitutes in brothels or inviting professional models to his studio, as in this painting. Here he chose to contrast two opposing attitudes: the woman on the left stretches her arms above her head, occupying the space and brazenly exposing herself to the viewer, while the one on the right withdraws into herself in a modest pose.</p> |
| BF138 | <p>Early in his career, Philadelphia native William Glackens was known for dark, gritty scenes of urban life. Around 1908, however, his palette began to shift toward the bright colors we see here, reflecting the influence of European modernists like Henri Matisse. The scene is set at Brighton Beach Race Track in Brooklyn.</p> |
| BF172 | <p>Philadelphia native William Glackens is best known for his early work as a member of a group of New York artists who focused on gritty, realistic scenes of urban life. This work dates from later in his career, after he had decided that being a true modernist was more about bold form and color. Here, for example, he seems to be channeling Matisse; Glackens would have been exposed to Matisse's work through the collection of his good friend Albert Barnes.</p> |
| BF287 | <p>Originally from New York, Maurer moved to Paris in 1897 to study art and may have trained briefly with Matisse. His painting <em>House</em> was likely among the first group of works that Dr. Albert Barnes purchased from Paris in 1912, launching his modern art collection. Maurer acted as an art advisor to Dr. Barnes in Paris; his eye for color, evident in this painting, helped develop Dr. Barnes's vision and taste for art.</p> |
| BF1182 | <p>Little is known about the American artist Susan Cray, but her use of cut black-coated paper mounted on a cream-colored background recalls the tradition of cut-paper silhouettes that first emerged in Europe in the 1700s. This scene shows rural New Jersey. To the left, a hunter and his dog trail after a deer and rabbit; at right, a family crosses a bridge over a waterfall and approaches their home. In mid-19th-century America, the cult of domesticity upheld nature and the home as refuges from the modern industrial world, places where spiritual values could be cultivated.</p> |
| BF992 | <p>Posed like a doll, a man stands on blue grass by a pink fence and holds a red balloon. The geometric shapes that compose his body recall cubism and the mannequin figures of Giorgio de Chirico; the hard lines offset his moon-like face and the whimsical, rounded shapes (perhaps imaginary balloons?) that float around him. The sand Clarke mixed into her paint adds to the scene's hazy dreaminess. She exhibited <em>The Balloon Man</em> at two prominent galleries: the Phillips in Washington, D.C., and the Bignou in New York City, where Barnes purchased it in 1943.</p> |
| BF1018 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene is known as a retablo. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. The Spanish Saint Raymond Nonnatus was born by Caesarean section after the death of his mother (Nonnatus means "not born" in Latin). As such, he became the patron saint of childbirth, midwives, children, and pregnant women, and he is often depicted in a cardinal's red mozzetta, a shoulder-length cape.</p> |
| BF550 | <p>Six bathers wade and swim in the waves of Bellport Bay in Long Island, New York, where Glackens rented a summer cottage. A seventh figure, visible on the sailboat behind them, bends over, perhaps to tie a rope. The vertical mast of the boat bisects the horizontal line of the pier, creating a stabilizing structure for the artist's fluid depiction of the bay. Glackens's short, quick brushstrokes suggest light sparkling on the water and a breeze blowing across the waves.</p> |
| BF930 | <p>Four well-dressed women gather on a hillside in Gloucester, Massachusetts, overlooking cottages and the boat-filled harbor of this prominent fishing and vacation town. Another figure passes on a horse or mule. In this tranquil seascape, Prendergast adapted classicizing scenes of the Mediterranean—from the Renaissance to his own time—to modern American life.</p> |
| BF160 | <p>The unnamed sitter of <em>Woman in a Red Blouse with Tulips</em> sits in a room furnished with yellow curtains, a purplish floral carpet, and a bouquet of tulips on a side table. She gazes toward the viewer through luridly shaded eyes. In composing this scene, Glackens was inspired by the patterned background, translucent brushstrokes, and exposed canvas in a portrait by Cézanne of his wife (c. 1886, purchased by Albert Barnes in 1912 and now at the Detroit Institute of Arts). In addition, Glackens adapted the flat and primarily decorative passages of bright colors from paintings by Matisse. Glackens's borrowing from French modernist prototypes highlights his efforts to modernize American painting, a mission also championed by his friend Dr. Barnes.</p> |
| BF179 | <p>William Glackens devoted a number of canvases to children at play in the parks of New York City. An illustrator by profession, Glackens captures the small, anecdotal moments of a park outing—the little boy whose feet dangle from the park bench is the only one with his hat off; a girl in white pedals her bike, keeping her eyes on the older girls. Painted in soft focus, this scene glows like a memory from childhood.</p> |
| BF345 | <p>This work depicts a panorama of brightly dressed figures before deep blue water and a sky streaked with tangerine-colored clouds. Two leafy trees dominate the scene. With this painting, Prendergast reworked the composition of his <em>Salem Willows</em> (1904; Terra Foundation for American Art)—which evoked the crowded scenes of early Italian wall paintings—according to new techniques that he had learned from Paul Cézanne, Henri-Edmond Cross, and Paul Signac during a trip to France in 1907. His <em>Holiday</em> (1908–9; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) replicates this effort in mainly pink and lilac hues.</p> |
| BF119 | <p>During his stay in Arles, a town in the South of France, Van Gogh often painted the local farm workers, whose simple lifestyle he admired and idealized. Van Gogh captures the humble coat of this man in loose, muddy strokes; ruddy cheeks suggest his work outdoors. A few horizontal dashes indicate puffs of smoke, and thick, unblended marks describe an ear. Despite these moments of near abstraction, Van Gogh maintains an astounding attention to naturalistic detail, working to portray to the way a person really looks and behaves. Note how the man's mouth is slightly clenched to hold the pipe.</p> |
| BF170 | <p>In this scene of the crowded beach of Revere, Massachusetts, Prendergast sets groups of brightly dressed figures (and one donkey) against the blue water of the bay. High clouds and a few boats float across the canvas. A pioneer of American modernism, Prendergast presents the scene as a pattern of sunny colors, blending sources ranging from medieval mosaics to recent works by Matisse. His many paintings of crowded seashores reflect the increased leisure time afforded to working Americans as a result of recent labor reforms.</p> |
| BF247 | <p>Glackens produced more than 150 flower still lifes, using this hand-painted pitcher in multiple works. Originating from a style of pottery native to the town of Quimper in Brittany, France, the simple decorative motif of the Breton figure standing upright echoes the modest bunch of fresh flowers. The blue background and white tablecloth almost reverse the blue-on-white pattern of the pitcher, neatly framing the vibrant blooms, who splash an array of colorful shadows on the table. </p> |
| BF10 | <p>This carefree summertime scene brimming with vacationers is set against the beach of Moulin Huet Bay on the Channel Island of Guernsey. Renoir spent a little over a month on the island from September to early October in 1883. While most of Renoir's Guernsey paintings feature voyeuristic depictions of bathing women and men, here he captures children at play. The rapid notation of the overall brushwork and generalized landscape elements suggest that the artist executed this painting in the studio. Renoir may have intended it as a study, as it remained in his possession until his death.</p> |
| BF921 | <p>Andrée Heuschling, known as Dédée at the time, was Renoir's last model. She posed for him from 1917 to 1919 in many different settings, costumes, and states of dress. The teenage Dédée inspired a final prolific period of painting for the aging, arthritic artist. Renoir enthused that her skin "took the light" better than any other model. Here he complements her rosy skin with a pink robe and a flowered cushion and sets her red hair against blue fabric in the background.</p> |
| BF221 | <p>Loose, almost improvisatory brushwork animates the rhythmic undulations of the hill and shifting of the clouds. Toward the right, a woman and child stand waist-deep in the grasses picking flowers. The figures may be summarily treated, but they play a vital role, both giving a sense of scale and serving as light-toned accents that lead the eye up the picture and enhance the sense of space. The compositional structure and the distant hint of a little red house bear a close resemblance to a work painted in Argenteuil by Claude Monet, <em>Wild Poppies</em> of 1873. These formal parallels suggest that Renoir's landscape shows the same site.</p> |
| BF142 | <p>The present work is one of four Renoirs that Dr. Barnes acquired from the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in December 1915, and in his book <em>The Art of Renoir</em> he describes the canvas as the embodiment of "the classic feeling of Michelangelo and Raphael, and the swirling surging movement of Tintoretto and Rubens." This homage to the old masters was an integral component of Renoir's modernist language. Unique to his late figurative paintings is the distorted ratio between the body's amplitude and its constricted surroundings, the suggestion of contours through tonal shifts, and the application of thin paint layers to allow the ground to show through, imbuing the flesh with an unparalleled luminescence.</p> |
| BF4 | <p>Though his mobility declined in the years before his death in 1919, Renoir continued to paint landscapes in the vicinity of his home at Les Collettes in Cagnes-sur-Mer. In this canvas, the hot climate of the South of France smolders in the golden highlights on the grasses and trees of the foreground. Just visible on the horizon, at the point where rock and sky meet, are the soothing azure, violet, and aqua blues of the Mediterranean. Renoir pulls this cooling thread through the houses perched on the hill and the trees of the middle ground, which bend and sway in the heat of the day.</p> |
| BF289 | <p>It is difficult to tell whether the scene takes place in a private Parisian garden or whether the women are in the countryside. What is clear is that Renoir here was painting <em>en plein air</em>, bringing his canvas outdoors to work directly before his subject. He is especially attentive to the shifting conditions of the natural world: the dress of the foreground figure is a swirl of colors, with brushstrokes indicating shadows from perhaps a tree or a cloud passing overhead.</p> |
| BF1136 | <p>Occasionally Renoir's fantasy of female sensuality takes the form of woman as the exotic "other," as when he painted European models as odalisques (concubines in a harem). Here, a model draped in colorful silks holds a tea tray. Luxuriant red tones suffuse the scene, offset by the lime-green bedcover.</p> |
| BF950 | <p>During the early decades of his career, Pierre-Auguste Renoir supported himself doing portrait commissions. This little girl is the daughter of Paul Durand-Ruel, the great impressionist dealer from whom Albert Barnes bought almost half his Renoirs. The painting is a good example of how Renoir seemed to embrace the traditions of painting while also pushing against them: the colors are experimental and modern—note the sweeps of purple in the girl's hair—while the overall format recalls the conventions of 17th-century court portraiture.</p> |
| BF45 | <p>This work is currently on loan to the exhibition "Renoir and Love" at the Musée d'Orsay, March 17-July 19, 2026, The National Gallery, London, October 3, 2026-January 31, 2027, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, February 20-June 13, 2027. The boater hat hanging on the chair tells us that this couple is probably taking a break from a canoe trip. By the late 19th century, boating had become a popular leisure activity for Parisians looking to escape the hustle and bustle of the modernizing city, and many lunch spots had cropped up along the banks of the Seine River, which winds through Paris and its suburbs. Renoir's brilliant handling of paint is especially evident in the tabletop still life; the wine glass is indicated by quick, minimal strokes.</p> |
| BF16 | <p>Renoir often painted this motif of a draped nude seated in a colorful interior. Though he would vary the staging of fabrics and objects, these decorative elements were meant to harmonize with the figure in both color and form. The bound red curls of the sitter's coiffure mimic the shape of the flower buds on a nearby straw hat as well as the color of the red-orange rug and cushion below. The direction of brushstrokes on the vivid wall hangings echoes the ridges of her back.</p> |
| BF28 | <p>Renoir painted many depictions of nude female figures drying off after a bath. Here he has posed one of his favorite models, Gabrielle Renard, recognizable by her dark locks and bold eyebrows. Renoir loved painting skin lit up by the sun. The bright white towel accentuates the complex mix of pinkish flesh tones; notes of lavender hint at veins just below the body's surface.</p> |
| BF563 | <p>Looming clouds, defined by heavy daubs of paint, dominate half the composition in this atmospheric riverscape by the Rouen-based impressionist Albert Lebourg. The French impressionists primarily chose recreational activities such as boating, promenading, and dining as their subjects while capturing the beauty of the River Seine and its banks. Some artists looked beyond the pleasures of leisure and the picturesque by exploring other aspects of modern life. Here, the swirls of pollution rising from smokestacks reflect the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the natural landscape.</p> |
| BF401 | <p>This early nude by Jules Pascin lacks the signature undulating lines and irregular splashes of color seen in the artist's later works. The identity of the subject is unknown, but her androgynous figure and the suggestion of her burgeoning sexuality produce an unsettling effect. Other painters in Paris around this time were creating nudes of adolescent subjects, many of whom were known to be prostitutes, so it is possible that the figure represented here entered into sex work at a young age.</p> |
| BF165 | <p>This painting depicts an area within the park of a half-ruined mansion near Aix-en-Provence in southern France. The composition's focus is the cistern, which is framed by groups of trees that rise and join to create an arched vault. A round millstone, no longer in use, sits at the left, while areas of green foliage bring visual interest to the background.</p> |
| BF99 | <p>A small pile of strawberries and some leafy unpeeled almonds rests on an undulating white cloth. The orange-red background matches the strawberries' glowing flesh and accentuates the horizontality of the canvas. The scene may evoke a reclining nude: Renoir wrote that he painted botanical subjects as "research of flesh tones," and that he wanted to paint women "like beautiful fruits."</p> |
| BF15 | <p>This work is currently on loan to the exhibition "Renoir and Love" at the Musée d'Orsay, March 17-July 19, 2026, The National Gallery, London, October 3, 2026-January 31, 2027, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, February 20-June 13, 2027. Renoir painted this scene of a peasant girl holding a plump child during a trip to Naples in 1881. Dissatisfied with his drawing skills, he had traveled to Italy to study ancient frescoes and Renaissance masters; he was particularly inspired by the "simplicity and grandeur" of Raphael's paintings. One can see the Italian painter's influence here in the composition's balanced arrangement and the gentle interaction between the rosy-cheeked figures. This is perhaps Renoir's modern, secular take on the Madonna and Child subject.</p> |
| BF163 | <p>Renoir visited Noirmoutier, an island off the west coast of France, in September 1892. This painting depicts the Bois de la Chaise, an area on the nothernmost part of the island renowned for its picturesque vistas of the sea seen through the pines. The Bois was also the site of villas and chalets for aristocratic visitors.</p> |
| BF110 | <p>Renoir once said that he was painting a sketch of roses as "research of flesh-tones for a nude." He could have been describing this painting, in which a seminude female figure looks toward a heap of enormous roses that echo the colors and contours of her body. Their swirling forms morph further into a hatted woman at the far right.</p> |
| BF162 | <p>The young girl depicted in this portrait was the daughter of one of Manet's acquaintances in the Parisian suburb of Bellevue. Manet, who was suffering from syphilis, had retreated to this countryside town in the summer of 1880 to take a rest cure. This loosely brushed work is unfinished, though the exposed ground is deliberately employed in some areas, particularly around the eyes and nose, as a highlight. The larger, first version of this composition shows the young girl seated on a slatted green bench, which is no longer present in the Barnes version.</p> |
| BF146 | <p>Renoir would often paint views like this from the terrace of the Maison de la Poste in the southern town of Cagnes, France. Painted in golden yellows, rosy pinks, sun-drenched whites, and burnt ochers, the hillside houses stand close together and dominate the composition, permitting only a small sliver of blue sky. The richly colored vegetation in the foreground, depicted in swirls of green and yellow paint, invite our eyes to climb up the swaying trees toward the flat rooftops of multicolored stone dwellings.</p> |
| BF567 | <p>Here we see a group of women, children, and dogs relaxing at a picnic while nestled in a copse of trees by a large boulder. The hat in the foreground likely belongs to the woman in the blue blouse at right; she seems to look out at the viewer, inviting us into the bucolic, sunlight-dappled scene scene. Renoir's feathery brushwork activates the entire canvas, integrating the figures with the landscape. Indeed, the two women in the background at left blend almost completely into the stand of trees.</p> |
| BF32 | <p>Delacroix made this small sketch for a much larger commission: the ceiling of the Chapel of the Holy Angels in the church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. In this biblical scene, the archangel Michael vanquishes Satan. Delacroix's powerful, athletic presentation draws from religious paintings by Titian and Rubens, among others. The Saint-Sulpice commission was part of an effort by Napoleon III and other officials to revivify Parisian churches in a bid for national reintegration following the French Revolution.</p> |
| BF929 | <p>A young man leans on his elbow in a pose recalling Renaissance representations of Melancholia, one of the four humors. He gazes past the skull resting on the table across from him, perhaps pondering his own mortality. Although skulls appear in some of Cézanne's early canvases—they were a common studio prop with a long history in still-life painting—the 1897 death of his mother and his own declining health might have prompted a late return to this symbolically loaded object.</p> |
| BF901 | <p>In this fantasy scene, seven young women play and relax by a pool in the woods. Soft strokes of rainbow color define the painting's composition and move the eye around to delight in the inviting landscape and splash of cool water against the bathers' velvety flesh. The subject matter and bright tones partly emulate 18th-century paintings by François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Albert Barnes's acquisition of this important painting in 1932 stirred substantial excitement from the press.</p> |
| BF874 | <p>The model is Renoir's mistress, Lise Tréhot, who wears a day dress and straw hat with simple trimmings. Over her shoulder we can spot the banks of the Seine River on the outskirts of Paris, a location associated with leisure activities of the bohemian set. Painted before Renoir developed his Impressionist style, the portrait presents a solidly modeled figure rendered in broad, flat strokes. The work reveals the influence of Gustave Courbet, whom Renoir had met the year before.</p> |
| BF720 | <p>Van Gogh painted very few nudes, partially because he rarely had enough money for hiring models. This work presents the female body with a curious mixture of allure and revulsion. Curvy hips and closed eyes are traditional signs of sensuality, but the exposed body hair and coarse facial features certainly challenge 19th-century conventions of beauty.</p> |
| BF586 | <p>Though he likely painted this work in his studio, Corot drew from his trips to Italy in creating this timeless, bucolic, and peaceful landscape. Evoking the mythical Arcadia, the artist delineates meadow, city, bay, and sky in a well-thought-out-composition. The details show the constant changes in nature, while the warm tones, stretched shadows, and layered sky capture a late afternoon in summer. A few vibrant brushstrokes are enough to suggest the rustling leaves and the boat sails in the distance.</p> |
| BF344 | <p>Jules Pascin is one of the underappreciated masters of 20th-century painting. Because his works are not readily classified under the rubric of a defined group—expressionism, cubism, fauvism—he has not received sustained critical attention. Pascin worked primarily in France, but also spent time in Cuba sketching the daily life of the people he encountered. This painting is based on some of those sketches. </p> |
| BF335 | <p>Maurice Denis sought to revive religious art by depicting everyday modern life with a sense of spirituality. This painting of a mother and child—a frequent subject for Denis—places the traditional icon of the Virgin Mary in the setting of a 19th-century French home. The young mother's simple black gown recalls the quintessential costume of the Parisian woman. Additionally, her delicately rendered features resemble those of Marthe, Denis's wife, highlighting the artist's desire to find divinity in his immediate surroundings.</p> |
| BF810 | <p>Traditionally, European painters made the nude subject decorous by presenting it as part of an edifying mythological narrative. Here, Courbet smashes that fiction. The nude is not Venus or Diana, but rather a prostitute preparing for the act. The picture's sexual content is frank: her genitalia is fully exposed, indeed placed exactly at the center of the composition, and there are several clues that hint at the prostitution theme. Clothes seem hastily discarded in the background, and she gazes out seductively at an unseen presence—presumably the client—who seems to stand or sit across from her. The path in front of her is well-worn, perhaps meant metaphorically. The graphic display of genitalia suggests that Courbet made this as a private commission. He painted several such explicitly sexual paintings during the 1860s.</p> |
| BF46 | <p>Renoir was interested in depicting scenes of pre-modern life, before the intervention of machines. The woman shown here, head bowed in concentration, is perhaps sewing or doing other work with her hands. Though we are given little information about her surroundings, a small patch of green and yellow suggests that she may be seated in a garden. Her black-brown hair, tied in a loose chignon, picks up the colors of her dress, apron, and lips—mauve, red, and white take over its description. Through these effects Renoir has captured the soft serenity of an unhurried moment.</p> |
| BF153 | <p>One of the things that made Degas such a radical artist was his approach to representing the human form. Here, rather than depict his figure as a whole, readable entity, Degas fragments the body, cutting off the long, crooked legs at the top and eclipsing the face; nor does he deliver traditional signs of sexuality. Though the setting is deliberately ambiguous, the scene probably takes place in a brothel.</p> |
| BF11 | <p>This young woman's country-style dress echoes the blues of the idyllic sky. The pure rainbow hues of red, orange, yellow and blue are also visible in the fabric of the dress as well as in her black hair, tied in a low chignon. The sitter's relaxed pose, one leg raised and one lowered, emphasizes the curves beneath her heavy skirts, and a shiny black shoe peeks out, rhyming with her hair.</p> |
| BF50 | <p>Beginning around 1877, Cézanne began to experiment with an exaggerated horizontal format for his still-life painting. Almost twice as wide as it is tall, the present canvas comfortably accommodates the expanse of the oblong-shaped plate and the compote of preserves on the side. The curves of the plate, jar, and fruit are counterbalanced by the straight lines of the quatrefoil-patterned wallpaper. The broad brushwork returns to Cézanne's earlier, heavier form of facture. Simple, spare, and small, the painting may allude to the modest reputation of the still-life genre.</p> |
| BF967 | <p>Spanish artist Joan Miró is often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s and 1930s, though he was never part of the official group led by poet André Breton. Like the surrealists, Miró sought to access the unconscious mind. Using a method called automatism, he tried to suspend conscious thinking as he was drawing, letting his inner psyche take over. Indeed the images here—monstrous figures floating around in a murky nothingness—seem to emerge from a dream.</p> |
| BF2541 | <p>A red sailboat floats on the turquoise Bay of Heraklion, complemented in the sky by scudding rhomboid clouds. Massive purple mountains surge above the bay. Gritchenko had begun his career among avant-garde circles in Moscow but fled following the revolutions of 1918. He spent the next few years immersing himself in Mediterranean sites, seeking to capture what he understood as deep connections between ancient artistic traditions and modernism.</p> |
| 01.13.18 | <p>Decorated chests like this one were made by German-speaking settlers in the rural counties of Pennsylvania. They were used as storage for household goods or personal belongings; they could also provide seating, which might explain the abraded paint on the top of this one. The designs decorating the surface (hearts, tulips, stars, geometric shapes) were imported from Europe and can be found in other kinds of Pennsylvania German folk art, including <em>fraktur</em> (decorated works on paper).</p> |
| 01.13.42 | <p>Dr. Barnes had an affinity for Windsor chairs, as he claimed one of his ancestors used to make them. Beginning in 1935, he bought numerous examples in a variety of styles. Unlike most of the Windsor chairs Dr. Barnes collected, this one retains some of its original dark paint. In the 1930s, chairs were regularly stripped to reveal the underlying wood; this example offers a glimpse at how such objects would have looked in the 18th century.</p> |
| 01.13.16 | <p>Jean Renoir, son of the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made this pot in 1921, before he changed careers and became a film director. Jean made his pottery at Les Collettes, the Renoir family estate in the South of France, where the elder Renoir had installed a kiln and encouraged his son to use the clay from the surrounding fields. Albert Barnes bought 42 of Jean's pieces.</p> |
| 01.13.02 | <p>Susanna Herr proudly stitched her name to this sampler in 1828. Girls, and even some boys, made samplers similar to Susanna's to demonstrate their sewing skills at the end of their education. Samplers like these were meant to be displayed, usually in the family's parlor or some other public room in the house. In some ways, this is akin to how parents display the good grades and successful school projects of their children today.</p> |
| 01.13.01 | <p>This tinned sheet-iron coffeepot bears the elaborate decoration of a lyre flanked by birds (probably peahens) and foliate motifs, most likely derived from Pennsylvania German art. The curving forms of the domed lid, rounded handle, and goose-necked spout complement the angularity of the double-conical body. The name of the coffeepot's original owner, Mary Weisner, is stamped in large letters around the flared base; the name of the maker, the Pennsylvanian master tinsmith Willoughby Shade, adorns the handle. Coffee had gained popularity in America following the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and was widely enjoyed by the time Shade fashioned this handsome pot in the 1840s.</p> |
| 01.12.13ab | <p>Albert Barnes had a keen eye for utilitarian objects such as this covered jar from the late 1700s. The jar was likely made in North Carolina by Moravians—pious, German-speaking Protestants from Bohemia who immigrated to the colonies during the mid-18th century. Preserving their European craft traditions, Moravians settlers quickly established shops for the production of domestic objects, producing durable earthenware vessels made from local clay.</p> |
| 01.12.07 | <p>The front of this box is decorated with a parrot whose curved body, bill, and wings echo the contours of the oval in which it is set. The top features an openwork, six-petal flower as well as engrailing, or small curves, around the edge. It has a metal handle and a back panel that slides up and down, suggesting that it may have been a portable tinderbox (to carry items for lighting fires). The box presents almost as a microcosm of other materials and motifs found in Room 12—from the wood panels of Horace Pippin to Albert Nulty's Pennsylvania German–style doves to the vegetal designs of the wrought-iron hinges.</p> |
| 01.10.38 | <p>Pewter lamps were common light sources during the 19th century. This example from Continental Europe has a pedestal base, a bulbous fuel reservoir, two curved wick shafts (missing their glass chimneys), and a screw-on top. The shallowness of the reservoir may indicate that the lamp was designed to burn whale oil, which was liquid at room temperature and could rise up the wick without pressure. The light produced would have been about ten times brighter than a candle, with far less smoke.</p> |
| 01.13.27 | <p>Looking at this sampler you might be asking yourself, where is the letter "J"? Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you—"J" really is missing. Many samplers made before the 19th century skip over the letters "J" or "U" because the early Latin alphabet didn't use these characters. The letter "I" was used in place of "J" and "V" stood in for "U." Before spelling was standardized, children would often write or sew different versions of the alphabet, like the one you see here.</p> |
| BF839 | <p>Although this painting is signed at the lower left corner, we know very little about the artist, de Spindt. The female subject is likely Swiss, as her clothing and flat-brimmed hat, with its peach-colored ribbon, match costumes worn by peasants in Switzerland during the early 19th century.</p> |
| BF188 | <p>After inheriting his father's country estate in 1886, Cézanne used it as his base, making numerous paintings of the grounds and the surrounding countryside. The farmhouse shown here is situated near the entrance to the main house. The artist may have made some of his works inside the building, but in this sun-drenched scene, he focuses on its warm-colored exterior walls.</p> |
| BF815 | <p>This rustic scene actually depicts a location within the city of Paris, which still included patches of farmland at the time Utrillo painted this work. The building in the foreground is the former hunting lodge of King Henri IV of France. The white pointed dome behind the structure is the Basilica of Sacré Coeur, a monumental church in the hilltop neighborhood of Montmartre. Utrillo likely painted this scene from a contemporary postcard, something he did frequently.</p> |
| BF219 | <p>In this loving portrait Renoir depicts his wife, Aline, holding the first of their three sons. He made this work a few years after traveling to Italy to study the old masters, a trip that had an enormous impact on his career. For this work, Renoir dried out his colors—blotting as much oil as he could from the paint—to give the canvas the chalky look of an Italian fresco.</p> |
| BF152 | <p>This small still life represents one of Cézanne's hallmark subjects—apples—along with an orange and lemon meticulously arrayed in front of a pyramid of blue patterned fabric. The warm colors of the fruit stand out against the cool tones of the cloth. The top corners and bottom edge of the canvas are left bare, showing the light ground layer Cézanne used as the foundation for his color contrasts. It is not known whether the artist intentionally left the composition in this state or whether it is unfinished.</p> |
| BF71 | <p>A nude sits in a lush grove dotted with flowers in this rapidly brushed image, which Renoir painted near the end of his life. Unlike his early <em>Bather</em> (c. 1875), at the center of this gallery wall, this late nude issues from the realm of fantasy—the fantasy of a female body whose sensuality is natural and unthreatening. Renoir reinforced this idea in the pictorial structure, rhyming the figure's bodily contours with the curves of the foliage and repeating the pinks of her flesh in the flowers.</p> |
| BF1014 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. This unusually shaped retablo depicts Saint Jerome. Kneeling, the saint holds a crucifix and strikes his chest with a stone, while a trumpet speaks the word of God.</p> |
| BF3 | <p>From April 1879 to March 1880, Cézanne lived on the third floor of a house at 2, place de la Préfecture in Melun, a town not far from the northern edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. The artist painted this scene from a window in his lodging, and the composition is unique for the artist, as the foregrounds in his village scenes are typically bare. Here, the four aligned rows of pollarded trees fill the square, and the cropped treetops create a striking horizontal line that divides the composition into two halves. Squiggles and patches of parallel brushstrokes are consistent with many works Cézanne executed at around the same time.</p> |
| BF2078 | <p>A figure stands on the rocky shore of the Bagaduce River in Brooksville, Maine, gesturing to someone in a rowboat. The tall ship farther out in the river suggests the scene's proximity to the bay; houses and hills occupy the distant shore. The impasto patches of color with which Prendergast constructed the land, sky, and water speak to his interest in adapting techniques from avant-garde French artists, such as Paul Cézanne, to images of American life.</p> |
| BF1149 | <p>This small oil painting was a study for the cover of <em>L'homme à femmes</em>, a satirical novel by Victor Joze published in 1890. Seurat pictures the story's main character—a struggling novelist who, rather than working on his writing, spends his time chasing women and getting embroiled in one scandal after another. Phallic cane in hand, the top-hatted figure stands with silly confidence as a flock of admiring women gathers behind him.</p> |
| BF30 | <p>Saint Barbara, wearing the crown of martyrdom, holds a miniature version of the tower in which she was imprisoned (for defending her virginity) and a chalice and Host, symbols of her involvement with the Christ's Last Rites. Mary Magdalene displays the alabaster jar from which she anointed Jesus. The postures and intricate naturalism of the figures' bodies recall works by contemporaneous German masters such as Martin Schongauer and the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar. This panel and the similar <em>Saints John the Baptist and Jerome</em>, also on this wall, were most likely wings of a triptych featuring a central Crucifixion scene.</p> |
| BF838 | <p>Renoir once told his friend Georges Rivière, "Painting flowers rests my brain." <em>Bouquet</em>, painted at the very end of the artist's life, seems to manifest such peace and ease. A decadent bouquet of chrysanthemums bursts from a blue-and-white pitcher, also apparently decorated with chrysanthemums. Loose impasto brushwork forms the flowers' bright fringed petals and swirling centers; thin washes of the same colors energize the background.</p> |
| BF95 | <p>Saint John the Baptist stands at left, identifiable by his camel-hair tunic and the nimbed lamb in his arms, indicating his recognition of Christ as the sacrificial Lamb of God. Saint Jerome, at right, wears the red garments of a cardinal in (posthumous) honor of his extraordinary contributions to biblical scholarship. He holds a book as well as the thorn that he removed from the paw of a grateful lion. The postures and intricate naturalism of the figures' bodies recall works by contemporaneous German masters such as Martin Schongauer and the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar. This panel and the similar <em>Saints Mary Magdalene and Barbara</em>, also on this wall, were most likely wings of a triptych featuring a central Crucifixion scene.</p> |
| BF129 | <p>This painting used to be in the famous collection of Gertrude and Leo Stein, the expatriate siblings who were at the center of the Parisian avant-garde in the early 20th century. Cézanne depicts a springhouse—a small building constructed over a natural water source and used either for refrigeration or as a pumping station. Paint is applied in short, parallel strokes, and in some places the color is so thin that the canvas shows through.</p> |
| BF561 | <p>Prendergast painted <em>Seascape—St. Malo</em> during a trip to France in the summer of 1907. To the left, the tomb of the romantic writer François-René de Chateaubriand looms over a curved shoreline and crowds of beachgoers sheltered by bright umbrellas. This painting was probably shown at a groundbreaking exhibition, held at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908, featuring work by a group of artists known as the Eight. A reviewer for the <em>New York Sun</em> recognized Prendergast's fusion of medieval and modern artistic references: "Prendergast . . . is really a Neo-Impressionist. He employs the [paint]according to the new men of the Independent Salons. His little panels are cunning mosaics, flowerlike arabesques, delightfully decorative."</p> |
| BF9 | <p>When Renoir first exhibited this painting publicly, at an 1875 auction in Paris, audiences were shocked by its naturalism. Rather than depicting a dreamy Greek goddess or another figure from mythology, as had been the tradition in European painting, Renoir gives us an ordinary Frenchwoman in her bedroom, with hair under her arms and rumpled bedclothes in the background.</p> |
| BF589 | <p>Beginning in 1886 Gauguin frequently painted in Le Pouldu, a small town in the Brittany region of France, attracted by what he perceived to be a landscape and a way of life untouched by modernization. The sitter of this portrait, Louis Le Ray, was the son of local couple who were friends of the artist. The thick lines defining the contours of the figure, chair, and flowers have been called "cloisonnism" for their formal affinity to medieval and Byzantine enamelwork.</p> |
| BF76 | <p>Renoir found endless inspiration in painting his children, and his second son, Jean, born in the fall of 1894, was one of his favorite models. Between 1895 and 1910, Renoir made about 60 paintings and pastels of his son. Here we see Jean as a baby with his golden locks and rosy cheek and lips. This sketch is closely related to a larger painting of baby Jean with his nanny Gabrielle playing with toy animals (<em>Gabrielle and Jean</em>, 1895–96; Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris).</p> |
| BF197 | <p>Though Monet preferred painting in the open air, for this work he brought his easel indoors to capture his first wife, Camille Doncieux, sitting at her embroidery loom. Quietly absorbed in her task, Monet's figure recalls the scenes of 17th-century Dutch masters, who were enjoying a revival in France at the time. Even indoors, light remains a primary concern for the artist; the touches of white flicker across the front of Camille's dress, creating a tapestry-like texture that perhaps alludes to her work on the loom.</p> |
| 01.07.62 | <p>Jean Renoir, son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made this ceramic pot in 1921, before he went on to become a famous film director. Jean made his pottery at Les Collettes, the Renoir family estate in the South of France; the elder Renoir had installed a kiln and encouraged his son to use clay from the surrounding fields. Albert Barnes bought 42 of Jean's pieces. </p> |
| 01.07.64 | <p>This table features fruitwood, a hardwood sourced from fruit trees such as pear or cherry. Cabinetmakers took advantage of the wood's rich color and texture by integrating its formal properties into the table's design. As a result, the wood's alternating tones form striped geometric patterns on the top surface. This color variation continues onto the legs and stretcher. Fashionable as well as affordable, fruitwood furniture appealed to members of the North American middle and lower classes. </p> |
| BF897 | <p>Henri Matisse painted this canvas in his hotel room in Nice, in the South of France, where he spent his winters beginning in 1917. The large window gives the painting a theatrical feel, as drapes open like stage curtains to reveal a single actor. One window is propped open, allowing for a glimpse outside; the small, neatly contained view suggests a landscape painting hanging on a wall.</p> |
| BF256 | <p>Although best known for his depictions of modern American life, William Glackens was also interested in the traditions of art. In this work, Glackens explores the visual culture of the Indian subcontinent, including references to a seated Buddha-like figure and two female nature sprits, which are found sculpted in the round at various Buddhist and Hindu temple complexes dating as far back as the second century CE. Glackens did not travel to India; rather, he sourced his ideas from a book on Indian sculpture and painting that he shared with fellow artist Charles Prendergast.</p> |
| BF861 | <p>Rousseau probably painted this view as a submission for the government-sponsored competition to decorate the new town hall in Asnières, a thriving and developed suburb eight kilometers from the center of Paris. The competition rules required local landscapes showing Asnières as a modern place for healthy leisure pursuits. The iron Clichy Bridge, the river tug, and the hot air balloon fulfill the demand for modernity, while the sailboats indicate active relaxation.</p> |
| BF475 | <p>Renoir was fascinated by hats and their infinite array of trimmings. To quote the model-turned-painter Suzanne Valadon: "Renoir particularly loved women's hats . . . he never ceased buying lots of hats." The millinery trade was a thriving industry in Paris during the second half of the 19th century. When the vogue for hats reached its peak, Paris was home to about 1,000 milliners. Since hats represented the most variable accessory in a wardrobe, even women with moderate means owned several. In this kaleidoscopic sketch, Renoir lavished his attention on the hats, while the heads are no more individualized than mannequins.</p> |
| BF227 | <p>Utrillo painted this scene showing the Church of Saint-Denys in the Parisian suburb of Arcueil from a postcard—a practice for which he was frequently criticized by peers who believed in the importance of painting directly from life. In 1939 a shipment of his paintings to the United States was held up in customs because the canvases were classified as "manufactured items" rather than fine art.</p> |
| BF426 | <p>English artist Charles Conder began his career as a landscape painter in Australia, but he specialized in silk painting upon his return to Europe in 1890. The fan-shaped <em>Fantasy: Sea and Figures</em> displays a delicate seascape dominated by a garlanded medallion of Venus, with classical and modern women bathing in the surf. The scene manifests some of the dreaminess of James McNeil Whistler's <em>Nocturne</em> series as well as the dissipated elegance of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's tableaux of Parisian nightlife.</p> |
| BF64 | <p>Matisse made this still life during a stay in Collioure, a medieval town on France's Mediterranean coast. He assembled various products from the region for the painting, including two painted earthenware plates, a carafe, a dark vase, a bowl, a watermelon, and a red shawl. Also depicted is the original plaster of Matisse's own bronze <em>Standing Nude</em> (1908–9; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Matisse frequently incorporated his own sculpture into his paintings; see, for example, his <em>Studio with Goldfish</em> in Room 19.</p> |
| BF1017 | <p>The Virgin Mary gained the title Our Lady of Guadalupe after her miraculous appearance in Mexico City in 1531. This santo (image of a holy figure) emulates a venerated image of her apparition that remains enshrined in the city. The original image referred to the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and a crown of 12 stars" described in the biblical book of Revelation. The panel of this santo seems to be from the 18th century, with overpainting done in the 19th century to refresh the initial portrait after years of devotional use in a home or a church.</p> |
| BF183 | <p>The red water tower at left in this street scene helps us to identify the setting as the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre. Built in 1835, the tower no longer served as a water source for the neighborhood by the time Utrillo painted this image. It still stands today, opposite the Parc Jean-Baptiste Clément, although it lacks the distinct red brick facade seen here.</p> |
| BF907 | <p>A boat with three pink sails floats in from the left, navigating between jagged rocks in the blue river . Above, plumes of violet and emerald rise into a golden sky. In this enigmatic image, Lurçat merged elements of classical landscapes, Cézanne's structuralism, and dream imagery inspired by his own wanderings through the Mediterranean. In 1930 an art critic wrote of Lurçat, "A deep humanitarianism and a studied judgment upon human destiny are implicit in his [recent] paintings," in which "form has a meaning beyond its own essence."</p> |
| BF281 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. The large-scale jungle scenes of Henri Rousseau are rife with violent struggles between wild animals such as lions, tigers, and horses. Here, a hunter rescues a nude bather from a sharp-clawed bear. The figure stands in a gesture of calm surrender, revealing dirty palms, while the man fires his gun at the beast. Rousseau's painting reads at first like a classic "damsel in distress." And yet the closer one looks, the stranger the picture becomes, and the harder the narrative is to decipher.</p> |
| BF313 | <p>Matisse made some of his most experimental work between 1913 and 1917. In this still life from the end of that period, he engages with the cubist strategies invented by Picasso years earlier. The painting presents a collection of sharp angles and overlapping forms. Space is compressed, with plate, fruit, and tabletop tilting toward the picture plane. Square shapes repeat across the composition, so that the surface becomes a kind of grid; meanwhile, a bright gold picture frame works to disrupt that order.</p> |
| BF187 | <p>Utrillo painted many depictions of the neighborhood of Montmartre in Paris. He used postcards to model the scenes, as in this painting of rue du Mont-Cenis. He has removed all the residents save for one small figure in the distance and has obscured many of the shop names.</p> |
| BF2550 | <p>A yellow-hatted figure with a blue face and swirling eyes juggles several multicolored balls. The effect is both comical and unnerving. When Dr. Barnes bought <em>Juggler</em> in 1950, he wrote to a friend: "I strongly urge you to arrange to come to Philadelphia... to look at a large number of paintings done by Hankins... He is the most exciting painter I have seen anywhere in the past several years—exciting because he is not only a real painter but as individual an artist as Matisse, Klee or Miró. He is also as definitely modern as any of these contemporaries, and I believe he is destined to go places."</p> |
| BF111 | <p>The interaction between atmospheric effects and the human figure lies at the heart of the impressionist enterprise and the practice of painting <em>en plein air</em>. The transformative power of sunlight and shadow on objects fascinated Renoir and his peers. After abandoning explicitly contemporary subjects during the early 1880s, Renoir began to explore different ways of integrating figures into rural settings. In his later work, such as this scene depicting a woman and small child, the subjects rarely engage actively with the surrounding landscapes as they enjoy moments of repose and beauty.</p> |
| BF875 | <p>This gold-ground panel shows two saints standing under the elaborate arches of a Gothic arcade. On the right is Saint Barbara, identified by her crown and Eucharistic chalice and wafer. The other saint is probably John the Evangelist, holding a Gospel book. The panel was probably the right wing of an altarpiece with a central Crucifixion scene.</p> |
| BF272 | <p>The Flight into Egypt is narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13–23). An angel appears to Joseph in a dream, instructing him to flee with Mary and the infant Jesus from the murderous King Herod. This painting evokes scenes by medieval masters such as Giotto and the Limbourg brothers. However, details such as the spongy, broom-like trees reveal that it's a modern interpretation of such exemplars.</p> |
| BF723 | <p>Pinto created this work using an ancient technique called reverse glass painting. The scene captures a destroyed home in the aftermath of an explosion. Among the scattered remnants of daily life are a framed portrait, a lone boot, and a mirrored hall tree that reflects a bathtub, inexplicably filled with water. A black cat stands entranced by two goldfish, possibly a reference to the work of Henri Matisse. Pinto painted this during World War II, which saw an unprecedented civilian death toll with millions of homes destroyed through strategic bombing.</p> |
| BF1009 | <p>The Virgin Mary gained the title Our Lady of Guadalupe after her miraculous appearance in Mexico City in 1531. This santo (image of a holy figure) emulates a venerated image of her apparition that remains enshrined in the city. The original image referred to the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and a crown of 12 stars" described in the biblical book of Revelation. The oval shape of this retablo is very unusual for this medium.</p> |
| BF295 | <p>Maurice Utrillo spent much of his life in the hilly Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre, where he was born. The picturesque area was a quiet haven for artists from the 1870s until around 1914, when its popularity drew more crowds and inspired a bustling nightlife of cafés, dance venues, and cabarets like the Lapin Agile (the Nimble Rabbit). What Utrillo shows here, however, is a quiet street corner devoid of the activity of modern life, perhaps reflecting a nostalgia for a time past.</p> |
| BF412 | <p>Maurer defines the multifaceted volumes of his jardinière (decorative flowerpot) with teal, lavender, and blue lines, apparently to discover how they interact with the surrounding spaces and objects. These include two baked goods on a cream-colored napkin, an undulating blue cloth with dark dots, and spatially ambiguous red passages. <em>Still Life with Jardinière</em> could be a visual expression of the philosopher Henri Bergson's radical ideas about perception and memory, which had inspired the artist.</p> |
| BF825 | <p>A monumental apple sits in what appears to be silver water, silhouetted by a zigzag backdrop and a blue patch of sky that opens like a door. Insight into this dreamy scene might be found in a treatise by the artist titled "This Is the Philosophy of Jean Lurcat," in which he explains his work in the third person, through the voice of Dr. Barnes. After World War I, "the Doctor" states, Lurcat "abandoned all the dead things of the war and began to live, [and] started to occupy himself with the abstract."</p> |
| BF2521 | <p>Vieira da Silva, who was born in Portugal but spent most of her career in Paris, liked to listen to music as she painted. This abstract interior scene invites comparisons to the rhythmic nature of music. The painted perspectival walls enclose various colorful forms that could be read as furnishings—chairs, rugs, floor lamps—and which are overlaid with multicolor horizontal lines. These lines contradict the depiction of a three-dimensional room by flattening space, creating a densely woven composition that plays with mark making and perspective.</p> |
| BF410 | <p>In this enigmatic canvas, Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico wove together memories from his childhood spent in the seaside city of Volos, Greece. The multicolored swan, evocative of a plesiosaur from his favorite book, zigzags across a surface inspired by a freshly polished parquet floor. The stilted changing-cabins on the beach fascinated the young de Chirico as sites of transition between dress and nudity.</p> |
| BF1178 | <p>Here Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico depicts a group of four larger-than-life horses within an outdoor architectural scene. Two smaller mannequin figures, dressed as a Roman philosopher and a soldier, race across the top of the scene. It's possible that de Chirico tried to evoke the rise of Italian Fascism after World War I as analogous to the apocalypse in the Christian Book of Revelation, which begins with the entry of black, red, white, and ashen horses.</p> |
| BF963 | <p>In a room adorned with a geometric wall hanging and figural sketches, a woman gazes into a bowl with three goldfish. Pine branches wreathe the bowl's base. For Matisse, goldfish were a metaphor for the relation between external reality and how we perceive it. He stated, "The object must act powerfully on the imagination; the artist's feeling expressing itself through the object must make the object worthy of interest: it says only what it is made to say."</p> |
| BF250 | <p>Picasso spent the summer of 1906 in Gósol, a remote mountain village in northeast Spain. Here he painted the enigmatic <em>Girl with Goat</em>, along with several other canvases that marked a new direction in his art. His color palette, which had been dominated by blue, shifted to roses and pinks, and he began incorporating subtle signs of classical antiquity. The boy with the water jug references a figure from Greek statuary, while the girl evokes a classical Venus arranging her hair.</p> |
| BF862 | <p>Renoir uses subtle body language to convey the flirtatious exchanges among a group of young Parisians gathered outside a music school. One man gently nudges his friend into conversation with a woman holding a scroll of paper, likely a piece of sheet music. The artist arranged the seemingly random grouping carefully, using members of his bohemian circle as models. While the painting dates to Renoir's impressionist period, its large scale suggests that he may have intended it for the Salon.</p> |
| BF885 | <p>The dead Christ hangs from the Cross, haloed and crowned with thorns. Blood issues from the wounds in his hands, feet, and side, where Roman soldiers pierced him with a lance. To either side stand his mother, the Virgin Mary, and his favorite disciple, John the Evangelist, to whom he had just commended as mother and son. They behold him with gestures of grief and adoration, inviting the viewers of this image to do the same.</p> |
| BF2518 | <p>Altripp's image presents a wavy, rose-colored object that flares like a flower on one end and tapers on the other. Nearly translucent, it rests upon watery streaks of rose and blue; the pearly blackish background shows through. In 1949, Elaine de Kooning wrote about Altripp in Art News, observing that he worked in an abstract idiom where "representation is teased as softly defined forms, mobile and leisurely, wind like smoke through compositions" that suggest "natural phenomena" or "attributes," like <em>Plant-Like</em>. She continued: "The unstressed mystical effects that characterize this work are carried more by the tones than by the drawing [and] the atmosphere is that of night." </p> |
| BF597 | <p><em>The Rose Tower</em> is a monument of Giorgio de Chirico's early, "metaphysical" period. An ancient Roman tower (perhaps of the Tomb of Caecilia Metella or Turin's Porta Palatina) looms at center, from behind a low brick wall. The horse refers to the equestrian statue of Carlo Alberto in Turin, and by extension to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (who had once lived in an apartment overlooking the statue). The rectangular structure faintly visible at front-center recurs in many of de Chirico's paintings as both fountains and tombs. De Chirico intended for this pastiche of monuments, made strange by the raking light, to form an image of Nietzsche's metaphysics: existential absurdity (best exposed by limpid geometries), the power of the individual to make their own meaning, and the "eternal return" of events and motifs.</p> |
| BF868 | <p>A delegation led by an official riding a white horse enters Siena through the city's northern gate, the Porta Camollia. The equestrian figure holding a mace appears in four other similar panels; in each case he is depicted as a civic or military protagonist. Now dispersed across different collections, the size and subject matter of these panels suggest that they originally decorated a cassone, or marriage chest.</p> |
| BF578 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026.</p> |
| BF418 | <p>This late medieval panel painting spotlights three saints who were believed to offer protection from plague. At center, Saint Roch points out a scar from his own affliction, from which he recovered with the help of a faithful dog who licked his sores and brought him bread. An angel vouchsafes this miracle by extending a hand in blessing. To the right is the early Christian martyr Saint Sebastian (we can see a scene of his execution by a volley of arrows in the hilly background); the bishop to the left is probably Saint Remigius. This panel would have been displayed in a church, either to solicit the saints' protection against plague or to express gratitude for their having helped with recovery.</p> |
| BF1042 | <p>Angelo Pinto was a Philadelphia-based painter who took classes at the Barnes Foundation along with his two brothers, Biagio and Salvatore. He was a friend of Dr. Barnes and eventually became a teacher at the Foundation. This summer scene of two women in swimsuits leaning against a rail on a windy beach boardwalk is most likely set on the New Jersey coast, a spot frequented by the artist and his family. Pinto employed a complex technique of layering paint on a glass surface, an exacting process that reverses the traditional method of building up an image in paint on a canvas.</p> |
| 01.23.30 | <p>This stoneware pot was originally a storage vessel for cream or other foodstuffs. Decorating the body are five leaf motifs and two inscriptions—"Nancy Tuttle," near the rim, and "June 15 – 1807," below the left handle—which suggest that the pot was a wedding gift. To produce the jar's salt glaze, the artist would have thrown a great amount of salt into the firing kiln when it was at its hottest; the salt then bonded with the outer ceramic layer to form a glassy finish.</p> |
| 01.23.43 | <p>Crafted from shells, stones, and dried beans, this small object takes the form of a white pelican with a bright orange beak and beady black eyes. The bird is one of several small-scale works of art given directly by Maling to Albert Barnes in the 1940s. In a letter to Barnes, the artist described arriving at this unconventional form of sculpture out of a need keep his mind active during his retirement.</p> |
| 01.23.45 | <p>To create this curious object, Thomas Maling rearranged and painted a single lobster claw to resemble a yellow-beaked bird. Standing on spindly wire legs, the bird is one of several small objects in the collection made by Maling in the 1940s. In a letter to Albert Barnes, Maling described having come to the medium of crustaceans after seeing faces in the lobster claws hanging in the shop windows of coastal Maine.</p> |
| 01.23.64 | <p>Compared to other Pennsylvania German chests in the Barnes Foundation, this example appears relatively restrained and does not include elaborate designs or an inscription. Instead, the maker has focused on contrasting areas of color as the main decorative element, resulting in a striking visual experience in which the deep green, red, and yellow seem to vibrate against each other. Chests like these were used as storage for household goods and personal belongings and could also provide seating.</p> |
| 01.11.57 | <p>This pitcher features an image of a man and additional floral motifs. Tin-glazed earthenware has a long history; it was first used in Europe in the 12th century before spreading to the Americas during the 16th through early 19th centuries. The production of tin glaze requires a combination of clear lead glaze and tin powder to create an opaque, milky appearance. While tin glaze is nonporous, its surface is fragile, which causes the surface to crack or flake.</p> |
| BF1195 | <p>Violette de Mazia was a legendary teacher at the Barnes for over 60 years and served as director of education after the death of Albert Barnes in 1951. In a 1955 letter, De Mazia told a friend that she painted this work while traveling through French region of Brittany. The work depicts a colorful group of fishing boats bobbing side-by-side in a marina. De Mazia's brushwork is thin enough that the horizontal wood grain remains visible, which reinforces the landscape format of the composition.</p> |
| 01.11.60 | <p>This German drinking vessel bears the emblem of a bakers' guild: a pretzel bracketed by three loaves of bread and standing lions. Two cheery inscriptions announce the hopes of the group: "May God in Heaven bless the field / Bake big bread so that we may make a little money," and "Long live a well-crafted tankard, AD 1792." A member of the guild may have owned this vessel and used it at home, or the guild may have kept it for communal purposes.</p> |
| BF844 | <p>Rousseau worked as a customs clerk on the outskirts of Paris, and it's possible he has depicted this neighborhood here. Four people and a buggy move about a street, which is bordered by houses and a wall on either side and crossed by telephone wires overhead. Beyond the wall we see a church steeple and a monumental soufflé of clouds. Rousseau's embrace of popular visual culture, including postcards and the covers of adventure novels, fostered the dramatic graphic quality that makes scenes such as this one so distinctive.</p> |
| BF1013 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. This retablo depicts Saint Rita of Cascia, who became an Augustinian nun after the death of her husband and sons. She is seen here wearing the black habit of the Augustinian order and holding several identifying attributes: the crucifix and skull both represent penance, and the whip would have been used for practicing mortification of the flesh. The cypress trees on either side of her, representing her two sons, are early pagan and Christian symbols for death.</p> |
| BF441 | <p>From de Chirico's metaphysical period, <em>The Pirate</em> features tools for the measurement of time and space stacked in the form of an abstract figure: stone markers, folding rulers, painted right angles, a wooden sundial. A map representing Greece—the Italian artist's birthplace, and where he spent his early years—includes travel routes taken or to be taken. A single eye boldly peers out from the composition's center,. The painting's title recalls British Romantic poet Lord Byron's popular poem "The Corsair," an Orientalist tale of Conrad, a pirate, outcast, and antihero."</p> |
| BF397 | <p>Henri Rousseau worked as a Paris tax collector, teaching himself to paint in his spare hours. Though he never traveled to an actual jungle, he regularly visited the Jardin des Plantes, Paris's museum of natural history, which included an aviary of exotic birds and a monkey house. With the foreground lit brightly, as if by the lantern of a visitor who has just happened upon the scene, the animals peer out from a shadowy web of oversized tropical plants. And in the last hours of the tropical night, the deep red sun looms in the sky.</p> |
| BF856 | <p>In his landscapes of Paris and its environs, Rousseau favored unremarkable views rather than the city's popular attractions. Upon first glance, this painting appears to be a straightforward record of a laundry boat and fishermen. Closer examination reveals the odd scale of the figures in the boats, who are tiny compared with the figure on the bank. The artist's imaginative jungle compositions and strange city scenes like this one made him popular with Parisian avant-garde.</p> |
| BF388 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. Henri Rousseau became the unlikely hero of the Parisian avant-garde for his "naïve" style and enigmatic themes. Here he takes a seemingly ordinary subject—a fashionably dressed woman out for a stroll—and makes it strange. The figure is dwarfed by oversize plants and fantastic purple flowers, while oranges almost twice the size of her head dangle above. She is clearly out of her element: this is underlined by the lack of a clear path on which she might continue. The vaguely surprised woman recalls the startled animals in the artist's jungle pictures, including <em>Monkeys and Parrot in the Virgin Forest</em>.</p> |
| BF1187 | <p>Joan Miró assigned specific dates to <em>Group of Personages</em> and to the related painting <em>Group of Women</em>, seen on the left side of this ensemble, as a form of record keeping, emulating the contemporaneous practices of photojournalism. During the Spanish Civil War, photographers captured snapshots of battles with handheld Leica cameras, allowing them to closely follow the militias. The photographs were then disseminated through the international daily press to publicize the Spanish Republic's resistance to General Francisco Franco's fascist regime.</p> |
| BF855 | <p>Rousseau depicts a group of four young women walking through the idyllic countryside. The landscape opens up beyond a path that runs diagonally across the composition. Scattered in a grassy field are a shepherd, his two goats, and four standing figures. In the middle part of the picture, five nuns dressed in their traditional black-and-white garments rest underneath a tent-like structure. A smokestack rises in the far distance, a reminder of industry.</p> |
| BF185 | <p>This painting belongs to a remarkable group of still lifes made between 1906 and 1908 in which Matisse explores arabesques—designs of intertwined, flowing lines that function to move the viewer's eye around the canvas. Matisse had been studying the works of Cézanne, who had died in 1906, and Cézanne's influence can be seen in the tension here between two and three dimensions. To create the illusion of depth, Matisse constructs a series of horizontals and verticals that recede like a staircase.</p> |
| BF581 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. Here Rousseau depicts an outdoor family gathering. The wine barrel, bottle, and small cups suggest some kind of celebration—perhaps a birth, a baptism, or the wine harvest. The scene takes place against the side of a whitewashed building that is partly overgrown with a treelike grapevine. The straightforward, yet mysterious depiction of the scene is a hallmark of Rousseau's style and something that was deeply inspiring to up-and-coming Parisian artists like Pablo Picasso.</p> |
| BF1188 | <p>Here Joan Miró depicted the figures' flailing gestures against a smoky background in order to evoke the calamity of aerial bombardment, a frequent occurrence during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The iconography of <em>Group of Women</em> echoes the forms of Pablo Picasso's <em>Guernica</em> (1937, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), which infamously portrayed the bombing of a Basque town. The top-right figure's upturned head, with her tongue stretched into a scream, could be seen as a reference to <em>Guernica</em>'s sword-tongued horse and wailing mother.</p> |
| BF331 | <p>Soutine fled to the south of France after German troops bombed Paris in 1918. He was accompanied by his friend Amedeo Modigliani and his dealer, Leopold Zborowski, and settled for three years in the town of Céret. Here, Soutine paints a reeling townscape (perhaps Céret) blocked by a lattice of trees that lash upwards like flames. His vigorous brushwork, applied without differentiation between foreground and background, flattens the space into a whirling painterly effect that seems to merge the physical landscape with his personal experience of it.</p> |
| 01.11.19 | <p>The term "spice box" refers to this object's original function. Over time, people began using spice boxes to keep not only costly spices and aromatic herbs, but also documents, jewelry, embroidery, and other treasured objects. Spice boxes in America gained popularity in the 18th century and were copied from English versions. This example was made sometime around 1900 and is slightly larger than most.</p> |
| BF1011 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Here, the archangel Michael stands on a monster, representing evil or the devil, as he brandishes a sword. Unusually, he does not hold a scale or balance but rather an inscribed shield.</p> |
| BF180 | <p>A thin paint surface and clean, decisive lines characterize this portrait of a young woman. The close-cropped hair and stylish blouse suggest that this model was a fashionable woman in Modigliani's social circle. But the shape of her face is reminiscent of Ivory Coast masks, a major influence on many artists in early 20th century. Modigliani occasionally sold pictures through the dealer Paul Guillaume, who also dealt in African sculpture and who helped Dr. Barnes collect African art.</p> |
| BF673 | <p>Of the 46 Picassos in Albert Barnes's collection, only a few are from the artist's cubist period, including this one. Dr. Barnes much preferred works from the artist's earlier Blue and Rose periods (roughly 1900 to 1906); in fact, in his 1916 article "Cubism: Rest in Peace," Barnes declared cubism a banal, academic style with no future. Eventually, his hostility toward cubism softened just a bit.</p> |
| BF357 | <p>Gourdon is a medieval Provençal village perched on a rocky peak and known for its panoramic views of the Mediterranean Sea. None of this is evident from Soutine's <em>Landscape of Gourdon</em>, however, in which a wind-blown, writhing screen of trees presses against the foreground, and the whitish spaces between them emerge in sculptural masses of paint. Soutine painted a series of landscapes following his 1918 flight from war-torn Paris to Provence, which included a stay in Cagnes-sur-Mer with Renoir, who was engaged in painting Mediterranean scenes in a more classical style.</p> |
| BF959 | <p>At the beginning of the 20th century, Dufy was part of the Fauves du Havre, a group of expressionist painters whose works focused on the leisure society of Normandy's popular seaside resorts. This interwar painting of a sailboat race testifies to his enduring interest in the motif. Freed from naturalism, Dufy developed a unique style in which he sketched simple but easily recognizable silhouettes before adding bright and saturated colors that overflowed from the loose outlines.</p> |
| 01.11.38 | <p>During the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE), ceramic vessels like this one were placed in tombs to serve the needs of the dead during the afterlife. Tombs were filled with all sorts of provisions for the deceased—not just storage containers but also ceramic replicas of ordinary objects used in everyday life.</p> |
| 01.11.42 | <p>During the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE), ceramic vessels like this one were placed in tombs to serve the needs of the dead during the afterlife. Tombs were filled with all sorts of provisions for the deceased—not just storage containers but also ceramic replicas of ordinary objects used in everyday life.</p> |
| BF954 | <p>A figure wears an orange Persian-style robe that's fastened below her breasts, revealing shimmering white trousers tied with a purple sash. Further bodily ornament includes red slippers, a beaded necklace, and a teal headscarf. Matisse rhymed the decorative presentation of the model with her setting: a diamond-patterned moucharaby screen; a golden basin; and green, lavender, and white stripes that indicate the wall on which she leans.</p> |
| BF2076 | <p>In this crowded beach scene, bathers lounge on a beach in the foreground while others splash in the ocean or climb a rocky hill that juts into the water. Deploying a rainbow palette and impasto brushstrokes, seen most vividly in the blue and green stripes of the churning waves, Prendergast engages recent European styles from impressionism to expressionism while celebrating the novelty of leisure time in early 20th-century America.</p> |
| 01.11.39ab | <p>Redware is the general term for earthenware pottery made from iron-rich clay that turns reddish-brown when fired. In Pennsylvania, redware was produced mainly by German immigrants—"Pennsylvania Germans"—who used the vessels for utilitarian purposes such as cooking, eating, and storage. This bowl was made by a potter named Samuel Miller and is one of his most complicated pieces. It is composed of four wheel-thrown parts: an inner and outer bowl, and an inner and outer lid.</p> |
| 01.13.68 | <p>This German Renaissance lock exposes its mechanisms to the viewer, albeit screened by a Romanizing vine pattern that emerges from a vase over the keyhole. Grapes, pomegranates, and grotesque heads—all intricately etched—grow from the vines. The lock's overall shape seems to respond simultaneously to the rectilinear mechanisms and to the curling vines; likewise, the decorative complexity may have symbolized its mechanical complexity. Notice that this object is displayed upside-down, in service to Dr. Barnes's design principles for the wall ensemble.</p> |
| 01.12.31 | <p>The heart at the end of this spatula is both decorative and functional. Its rounded shape allowed the spatula to be hung up, likely on a rack in the kitchen, when not in use, to help keep the cooking spice tidy. At the same time, the heart shape showed off the skills of the blacksmith who made this piece. It also lends an element of delight to this otherwise humble and practical tool.</p> |
| 01.06.48 | <p>At the encouragement of his father, Jean Renoir began making ceramics when he came home from fighting in World War I. Using clay near their home in Cagnes, he crafted simple vessels like this bowl, which he decorated with colorful glazes. His motifs, including the grapes and peaches here, were often inspired by Cézanne's paintings. Dr. Barnes admired the charming rusticity of these objects and bought dozens for himself and for friends.</p> |
| BF116 | <p>This painting is one of many crowded beach scenes made by the American artist Maurice Prendergast. The rough texture of the brushwork and the vibrant colors indicate the artist's interests in the aesthetics of French modernism and medieval mosaics. During trips to France and Italy, Prendergast closely observed Paul Cezanne's constructed brushstrokes, George Seurat's pointillist technique, and the stone and glass mosaics of Venice.</p> |
| BF974 | <p>Renoir's small still-life paintings fall into two principal groups: bouquets of flowers in vases (mainly roses, anemones, and chrysanthemums) and clusters of fruit on tablecloths. Neither the bouquets nor the fruits are elaborately staged; they give the impression of everyday things that the painter happens to have on hand. Here we see a glowing orange, upright, with two leaves attached; two reclining lemons also have their stems and leaves. The broad wash of blue in the background could point to an analogy with bathers.</p> |
| BF575 | <p>The "mannequin" figures seen here represent the ancient Greek tragedians Sophocles and Euripides. They stand back to back, apparently in conversation, leaning on what seems to be a grave stele. Fragments of classical architecture compose the background. Indeed, de Chirico presents the mannequins as composites of humanity, statuary, and architecture. The colorful prisms and carpenters' squares that fill their torsos reinforce the artist's belief that classical geometries reveal metaphysical principles, such as how myth can serve to make sense of the human tragedy.</p> |
| BF538 | <p>Renoir painted flowers throughout his career to experiment with colors and textures, to relax his mind, and to satisfy demand from eager buyers. The yellow, red, and white roses in the bouquet seen here range from closed buds to drooping blossoms (note the fallen petals at the left), presented from multiple angles. The magnificent open white rose contains every color that Renoir used in this painting, anticipating the profound blurring of subject and background seen in late works such as <em>Nude in a Landscape</em> and <em>Nude from the Back</em>, both on the adjacent wall.</p> |
| BF1153 | <p>Like other members of the Parisian avant-garde, Seurat spent his summers painting in the boating towns of Normandy. In 1886, he exhibited views of Grandcamp alongside his renowned <em>A Sunday on La Grande Jatte</em>, for which he completed plein air studies (painted outdoors) like this one. This small study of sailboats reveals Seurat's process of making oil sketches outdoors before executing the final work in the studio. Unlike in his paintings with precise "points" of color, the blue-gray tones of the contemplative Normandy coast are suggested here by long brushstrokes of varying size and length, which float above and below the horizon line.</p> |
| BF166 | <p>Édouard Manet painted this scene in 1873 while on a visit to Berck-sur-Mer, France, a fishing village on the Channel coast, with his family. Without a port to shelter their boats, fishermen in Berck beached their vessels in the sand along the water. Here, they are applying flaming tar to a boat to protect it from dampness while they are ashore.</p> |
| BF860 | <p>This small canvas likely depicts Louveciennes, a village overlooking the river Seine about 10 miles west of Paris. The lack of articulation and anecdotal detail affirms Renoir's prioritization of figure painting over landscapes, which he treated in a more informal and improvisatory way. A small shed and a figure defined by a blue stroke topped by yellow are minimally described and almost engulfed by the flurry of foliage. The brown and yellow tones signal autumn's arrival.</p> |
| BF164 | <p>Cézanne painted many portraits of working-class people in Provence. Here he renders his subject with monumentality and dignity, reflecting his respect for rural Provençal types. Cézanne sets off the woman's remarkably vivid red-striped dress with patches of green and blue on the wall. The roundness and solidity of her form rhyme with the cauldron on the floor behind her, suggesting a parallel between the functional object and her steadfast presence.</p> |
| BF118 | <p>The pink trimmings on the girl's bonnet are set off against the sky-blue background. Loose brushwork conveys a sense of spontaneity as the girl reaches to untie the ribbon under her chin. Dr. Barnes installed this painting above a bowl by Renoir's son Jean, making a connection between the two. The girl's round hat rhymes with the light blue bowl sitting on the x-bar stretcher of the table underneath the picture. The similar palettes point to the influence of father on son.</p> |
| BF303 | <p>In the late nineteenth century, the French landscape was becoming increasingly marked by signs of industry. Van Gogh depicts a glass factory in Asnières, a suburb northwest of Paris where the artist painted frequently in the summer of 1887. The round objects stacked along the sides of the pathway are balls of glass awaiting melting inside the buildings. They would have been formed into lantern globes for gas streetlights and interior fixtures.</p> |
| BF973 | <p><em>River Bend</em> is the earliest painting by Cézanne in the Barnes collection. Dating from about 1865, this landscape demonstrates the young painter's command of the artform. The canvas is one of a group of about ten modestly sized landscapes that are filled with dynamic brushwork and color contrasts. Individual elements such as the sky, trees, rocks, and water are simplified and commingle in a tumult of thickly applied paint—even the small figure with the red cap appears to be subsumed into the foliage. As a result, <em>River Bend</em> is less a record of a specific place and more a study in color, texture, and rhythm.</p> |
| BF117 | <p>The moment when the Virgin Mary learns she will give birth to Jesus was a popular subject for Renaissance artists. Holding a book, the Virgin kneels near a prayer desk; she is caught in a moment of private devotion, symbolizing her innocence and faith. The Archangel Gabriel appears in a flowing yellow robe, his right hand extended as he delivers the news. Above, the Holy Spirit takes the form of a dove, flying down from Heaven through a beam of light, symbolizing the conception.</p> |
| BF1179 | <p>A group of nude figures gathers around a pool in a forest. The theme of bathers in nature originated in the Renaissance, traditionally showing idealized female bodies in harmony with the landscape. Yet Cézanne disturbs this easy relationship in this small canvas. Space is hard to read. And while he derived many of the figures' poses from classical statuary, their bodies are obscure—most are androgynous and/or engulfed in the foliage.</p> |
| BF346 | <p>In this domestic scene, a woman seated at a table hunches over a letter. Pieces of paper are strewn across the red tablecloth, forming a kind of pattern while also attesting to the intensity of her writing process. Bonnard painted this work after taking multiple trips to the Netherlands, and he may have been inspired by 17th-century Dutch pictures of letter writing. The diffuse light coming through the gauzy curtains gives the composition a pearlescent tone, an effect that that often appears in the tranquil yet psychologically charged scenes of everyday life Bonnard painted at this time.</p> |
| BF5 | <p>Goya was one of the great portraitists of his time. In 1786 he was appointed court painter for the Spanish crown, turning out commissions for royalty and aristocracy. This more casual portrait, painted much later in his career, depicts Jacques Galos, the governor of a bank in Bordeaux, France, who handled Goya's personal finances. Goya settled in Bordeaux in 1823 after fleeing Spain to escape the oppressive rule of King Ferdinand VII; he spent the last eight years of his life there.</p> |
| BF822 | <p>While landscapes had become a more lucrative endeavor, Corot continued to paint figures in the studio, mostly out of pure enjoyment. He dressed his Parisian models in Greek or Italianate costumes, infusing them with mystery and melancholy. With their simple backgrounds and limited color palette, the majority of his figure paintings speak to a lyrical past rather than a modern moment.</p> |
| BF908 | <p>The model here is Henriette Henriot, an actress who posed frequently for Renoir during his impressionist years. Renoir captures her in a state of undress, perhaps just having cooled off in the water; the damp undergarment clings to her thigh. This painting would have scandalized audiences during Renoir's time. The colors, first of all, with purplish blotches falling across shoulders and legs, were jarring for audiences used to looking at smooth idealized bodies. Moreover, Renoir has depicted a real woman rather than some mythological nymph—a breach of decorum.</p> |
| BF964 | <p>Although best known for his landscapes, Corot also painted several portraits during his career. This composition, created during the artist's first trip to Rome, from 1825 to 1827, depicts a young woman with a pensive gaze. Along with other paintings from this period, this work reveals Corot's interest in using simple figure studies as artistic exercises. While developing his technical abilities, he began to include emotional and psychological dimensions in his portraits, such as the melancholic expression seen here.</p> |
| BF945 | <p>Rose-suffused tones pervade flesh and flora in Renoir's Arcadian paradise. Inspired by the perennial warmth and picturesque views of Cagnes-sur-mer, the artist painted a profusion of nudes, presented individually as well as in more complicated group scenes. These figures appear in a variety of poses—sitting, standing, reclining, drying off, undressing, sometimes fully exposed to the viewer and sometimes turning away. Their abundance of flesh evokes the fecundity of nature—a correlation which Renoir emphasized through the harmonious integration of the figures with their lush surroundings.</p> |
| BF1185 | <p>Seurat spent the summer of 1885 in the small fishing commune of Grandcamp-Maisy, painting the English Channel from varying vantage points of cliff, port, and shore. Like other members of the Parisian avant-garde, Seurat was grappling with how to build upon the innovations of the long-reigning impressionist movement; one fruitful method of exploration involved the systematic application of complementary colors, informed by current optical theory. While the boats in this study appear to be without sails, the thin application of paint hints at their white outlines. Overall, the effect is of a windless day where the deep sand tones of the beach seem to anchor the boats to land.</p> |
| BF975 | <p>Renoir believed that appealing to the viewer's tactile sense was essential when painting the naked body. "A nude is not done until I feel I can reach out and touch it," he said. In this painting produced close to the end of his life, Renoir seems to insist on the physicality of his figure. Velvety flesh, created with layers of thin glazes, fills the canvas; the woman's body seems ready to spill into our space.</p> |
| BF113 | <p>Maurice Prendergast was an American artist who applied the lessons of French post-impressionism to his own painting. The bold brushwork you see here, for example, which lends the canvas its rough texture, was influenced by the pointillist technique of Georges Seurat. Here Prendergast updates the classical tradition of depicting nude women in the outdoors by mixing in clothed and half-dressed figures. These subjects come across not as classical muses but as self-possessed, modern women.</p> |
| BF109 | <p>Fed up with industrialized Europe, Paul Gauguin went to Tahiti in 1891 seeking a simpler, more "primitive" way of life, one uncorrupted by modern technology and social mores. Although the island was in fact changing—it had been colonized by the French—Gauguin painted the Tahiti of his fantasy. Here, as in so many of his canvases from the period, he depicts a native Tahitian wearing a traditional <em>pareo</em>. Barefoot, tranquil, and at ease in her surroundings, the woman appears to be in perfect harmony with nature.</p> |
| 01.06.17 | <p>This storage box for a sailor, known as a sea chest, was used to hold clothing and personal items aboard a ship. The name carved at the base probably indicates the chest's owner— Jim McDivit of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The letter and numeral on the lid might refer to the ship's name or to a previous owner. This chest appears in the Index of American Design, a visual archive of American decorative arts created as part of the Depression-era Federal Art Project.</p> |
| BF952 | <p>A little girl in a red blouse and pink hairbow poses proudly for her portrait with her hands in her lap, fingers interlaced. Soutine, as a boy, had been badly beaten for asking a rabbi to pose for a portrait, not fully grasping the Jewish rules against representation; later, as an émigré to France, he embraced the tradition of portrait-painting. Soutine's tender portrait of this child seems to radiate his joy in creating an image of another human person.</p> |
| BF378 | <p>Though conventional in format, this portrait of an unidentified man is uniquely Soutine's in its gestural brushwork and fiery colors. As in Soutine's other portraits, hands are spectacularly expressive: positioned right up close to the viewer, they are a tangle of thick strokes, each a different color. The man's clenched body and grimacing face pulsate with an empathic energy that seems to wrinkle his suit; we can almost feel Soutine's presence as he tried to capture his sitter. One model described Soutine's working process: "He was turning red like a crayfish, his eyes widened and his beautiful fingers felt his throat and caressed his face. The emotion seemed to stimulate his sense of color, and he muttered incomprehensible words between clenched teeth. "</p> |
| BF890 | <p>In the 1920s, Matisse moved away from the radicalism of his early Fauve canvases. Colors became more subdued, even naturalistic, and he began to paint the traditional academic subject of odalisques—or harem women. Popularized during the colonial era by French artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, odalisque pictures typically embody a European fantasy of exotic, non-Western sexuality. Here, Matisse poses a European model, Henriette Darricarrère, in Moorish garb; the head scarf and masklike face seem designed to emphasize the figure's unknowability.</p> |
| BF582 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. The standing figures here are the artist and his wife on their wedding day, and the little heads floating above are meant as a loving homage to their deceased spouses. Henri Rousseau painted many portraits and often posed his subjects outdoors, surrounded by plants and flowers both real and imagined. Another of his "portrait-landscapes," a term he coined for this genre, hangs across the room.</p> |
| BF1008 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. Saint Rosalia of Palermo, shown here wearing a coarse woolen cloth, typical of Augustinian nuns, and a crown of roses for her chastity, is often invoked during times of plague or disease. Saint Rosalia became the patron saint of Palermo, Italy, when her bones were said to have ended the plague there in 1624. She also holds a skull and scourge (whip), objects related to her martyrdom and ascetic life.</p> |
| BF377 | <p>A monumental, Roman-style statue of a man in a business suit stands in the middle of a Mediterranean piazza framed by arcaded buildings. He faces the horizon, which is occluded by a brick wall that is nonetheless low enough to reveal palm trees, a trail of smoke from a passing train, and rainbow pennants flapping in a strong wind. De Chirico—inspired by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche—was enthralled by collisions of antiquity and modernity, and he stressed this scene's strangeness with raking light and a limpid geometry reminiscent of an Italian Renaissance experiment in perspective. <em>The Arrival</em> was one of de Chirico's earliest "metaphysical" paintings, championed by the surrealists; he further developed its themes with probing wit throughout his career.</p> |
| BF881 | <p>Red Rug is characteristic of the period in which Matisse returned to a realistic representation of space without renouncing what Dr. Barnes, in his analysis of the picture, called a "total plastic integration." In Red Rug, the figure, placed at the center of the composition, is surrounded by objects that seem to turn around her in an endless circle.</p> |
| BF717 | <p>Matisse set this portrait of his wife, daughter, and two sons in the living room of the family home in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. Music played an important role in the Matisse household; the artist himself was an accomplished violinist. Perhaps the violin resting in the foreground of this family portrait is Matisse's way of including himself in the picture.</p> |
| BF570 | <p>Here we see a group of people strolling through the Parc Montsouris, one of four parks that opened in Paris during the 1870s, a period of urban renewal throughout the city. A popular location, the park included an artificial lake, which Rousseau has pictured here. The flatness of the scene makes it look as though the figures in the foreground are walking across a stage and the landscape is painted on a backdrop. Many artists in later generations admired this sense of spatial dislocation, often present in Rousseau's works.</p> |
| BF1030 | <p>Saint Acacius of Mount Ararat is shown on a cross, although without any wounds present, in the costume of a Spanish soldier of the late 18th or early 19th century. He often wears a crown of thorns, but here he is shown in a broad-brimmed hat. The saint was a Roman soldier in the second century but left the army, along with his soldiers, after converting to Christianity. The soldiers were crucified as punishment.</p> |
| BF450 | <p>This quiet street scene depicts the Place du Tertre in the Paris neighborhood of Montmartre. We can determine the specific place based on the view of the Basilica of Sacré Coeur in the background—it is the white dome seen behind the trees to the left of center. The neighborhood of Montmartre has a rich artistic history; many artists, including Maurice Utrillo, lived and worked there during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.</p> |
| BF184 | <p>This intimate scene portrays the model Antoinette Arnoud or her sister. The subject stands just to the left of the curtained window and covers her legs with a white towel or cloth. Her pose and the boudoir table with a mirror behind her suggest that she has just stepped out of the bath. She does not meet the viewer's gaze but rather looks intently out the window, conveying a psychological interiority that is echoed across many of Matisse's paintings from this period. The introspective mood of the moment is interrupted by the striking green leaves of the flowers in an otherwise, pastel-hued palette.</p> |
| BF369 | <p>Modigliani's young model sits patiently on a wooden chair, sporting a blue-black sailor suit with crisp, white collar and cuffs. The classic outfit suggests that he comes from a middle- or upper-class background and may indicate that the portrait was a commission. Cool blues and grays contrast with the vibrant pinks and oranges to enliven the dark suit and the flushed skin. Among the variety of tools employed by Modigliani include small brushes to smooth down thick shadowy areas and a rag to create delicate impasto swells on the cheeks.</p> |
| BF882 | <p>This canvas's small size, the overall confidence in handling, and the lack of reworking suggest that it was painted in a single sitting. The seated model is presented in three-quarter profile and looks in the direction of the viewer. The railing behind her acts as a barrier, enclosing her in the constricted space of the balcony, and although she is outside, the street seems far below and the sea calm and otherworldly. This kind of restricted space and the psychological exchange between model and artist that it prompts would become one of Matisse's favorite themes during his initial years in Nice.</p> |
| BF367 | <p>Chaim Soutine is known for working in series. For Soutine, repetition was a really a strategy for expressing originality: each portrait is meant as a fresh encounter between a material subject and his own perception. Here, we see the lanky figure of a bald, elderly man sitting on a wooden chair with his gnarled hands folded (in prayer?) across his lap. His body is elongated, like the canvas itself; positioned frontally, the man resembles a Byzantine icon or Gothic statue.</p> |
| BF25 | <p>The three works on this wall form a group of three paintings, known as a triptych. Although the group is commonly called the "Three Sisters Triptych," it is likely that only two sisters served as models for all nine figures in the paintings—an Italian woman named Laurette and her sister Anna. In the background of this work, Matisse depicted his own painting in progress, <em>The Rose Marble Table</em> (1917, Museum of Modern Art, New York). The painting-within-a-painting, which also resembles a window onto a garden, deliberately blurs the boundary between real and fictive space.</p> |
| BF888 | <p>The three works on this wall form a group of three paintings, known as a triptych. Although the group is commonly called the "Three Sisters Triptych," it is likely that only two sisters served as models for all nine figures in the paintings—an Italian woman named Laurette and her sister Anna. <em>Three Sisters with Grey Background</em> was the last of the three paintings on this wall that Dr. Barnes purchased. Matisse himself suggested the acquisition when he visited the collector in Merion, Pennsylvania, in December 1930. After seeing <em>Three Sisters with an African Sculpture</em> and <em>Three Sisters and "The Rose Marble Table"</em> hung separately in the galleries, Matisse persuaded Barnes to buy <em>Three Sisters with Grey Background</em> and install the group as a triptych. The artist specified the arrangement of the trio himself, creating a lively rhythm of hand gestures and syncopated greens, purples, and yellows.</p> |
| BF363 | <p>The three works on this wall form a group of three paintings, known as a triptych. Although the group is commonly called the "Three Sisters Triptych," it is likely that only two sisters served as models for all nine figures in the paintings—an Italian woman named Laurette and her sister Anna. The descending height arrangement of standing and seated figures in this work mirrors the ascending one of <em>Three Sisters and "The Rose Marble Table"</em>; these two paintings, in turn, frame the triangular composition of <em>Three Sisters with Grey Background.</em> The sculpture in the background is a Bambara female figure from Mali that was likely in Matisse's personal collection. Paired with the Moroccan table in the foreground, the objects speak to the global artistic traditions that inspired the artist.</p> |
| BF953 | <p>Here Soutine presents a monastic church or chapel against a lilac sky. The building's architectural simplicity—the modest Romanesque style of southern France—is offset by the lurid red of the roof and trim. The writhing, leafless trees and dark windows, staring out like hollow eyes, give the scene an ominous, almost haunting, quality.</p> |
| 01.04.64 | <p>This head depicts an elite male in the style of the late New Kingdom. His face is slightly heart shaped, with large almond eyes outlined with eye makeup, and he wears a distinctive two-layered wig. This head is almost certainly a 20th-century production, as the carving is rough and works around the breakage at the neck, meaning the head was never part of a full statue. It was likely based on an authentic New Kingdom statue in another museum or private collection.</p> |
| BF2055 | <p>Dressed as an Orthodox bishop, Saint Nicholas of Myra (d. 342) displays a Gospel book in his left hand and holds his right in a gesture of blessing. This type of composition refers to a wonder-working icon located in the town of Zarazsk (southwest of Moscow), which was believed to ward off Tartar invasions in the 16th century and thereafter became very popular. Holes around the frame and halo of this icon show where intricate metal revetments were once fastened. When animated by candlelight, the icon would have been part of a holistic, multisensory ecosystem of prayer, most likely in a private setting. The Greek inscription at the top of this icon reads <em>Ho hagios Nikolaos</em> (Saint Nicholas).</p> |
| BF91 | <p>The Virgin Mary holds the Christ Child on one knee and smiles tenderly. Christ reaches playfully toward the hand she raises in invitation to the viewer. They sit on a throne that resembles an altar, a poignant reminder of his eventual self-sacrifice; the artist gives the figures three-dimensionality by setting them against an abstract, richly patterned background. Christ and Mary are joined by Saints Jerome (in red) and Francis (in brown), whose pairing was associated with Franciscan patronage.</p> |
| BF831 | <p>Caneletto was known for his city views of Venice, called <em>veduta</em>, which English tourists particularly admired as souvenirs. Depicted here is the intersection of the canal of Cannaregio, which continues into the background, with the Grand Canal in the foreground. Caneletto has altered various elements of the landscape for compositional purposes; the bell tower is taller and more slender than in reality, the bridge is brought closer to the foreground, and the building to the right, the Palazzo Querini, is given a more angled and taller facade.</p> |
| BF872 | <p>This painting by the Spanish artist Nicolás Solano shows St. Katherine debating with the enthroned Roman Emperor Maxentius (r. 306-312 CE). He pulls his beard in frustration that Katherine has converted thousands of his subjects to Christianity. Even though his assistants prepare Katherine to die, her gold halo indicates that her martyrdom would be rewarded with eternal life. Part of a monumental altarpiece, the painting's message of faith and redemption would have been especially powerful to the congregation.</p> |
| BF851 | <p>This painting shows Christ and his twelve disciples seated at a round table for the Last Supper. Christ raises his hand to consecrate the items before them—a chalice of wine and a loaf of bread, partially sliced to resemble the Eucharistic wafers of the Mass. Biblical accounts make it possible to identify some of the disciples, including the youthful, curly haired John, who rests his head on Christ's bosom, and the traitorous Judas, the figure in yellow who furrows his brow.</p> |
| BF870 | <p>The Virgin Mary sits in humility with the Christ Child in her lap and her hands folded in prayer. Two angels in green part red-and-gold curtains to reveal the sacred scene; two in blue prepare to crown Mary as Queen of Heaven. The white dove at top represents the action of the Holy Spirit in effecting Christ's birth to Mary. The artist, Benozzo Gozzoli, was a student of Fra Angelico who was best known for painting mural cycles—most notably in the palazzo of the powerful Medici family, in Florence. This <em>Madonna and Child</em>, however, would have stimulated private devotion. The inscription in Mary's halo is the last line of the <em>Ave Maria</em> ("Hail, Mary") prayer.</p> |
| 01.05.38 | <p>Although yarn winders were conceived as functional objects, Albert Barnes clearly saw aesthetic value in their form. After the yarn was draped around the outside of the four arms, the handle on the wheel was turned in order to gather the material into a loosely coiled bundle called a skein. On the shaft opposite the wheel is a small mechanism that clicks with each full rotation; the person doing the winding would therefore know the length of the yarn by counting the clicks.</p> |
| BF837 | <p>Though long attributed to Veronese, this portrait was more likely painted by Parrasio Micheli, another Venetian Renaissance artist who is known to have collaborated with Veronese. The sitter's sumptuous dress suggests that she is a noblewoman; however, by the mid-16th century, tradesmen and artisans were also commissioning portraits of themselves. A more reliable signifier of her status is the large size of the canvas.</p> |
| 01.05.32ab | <p>In Japanese tea ceremonies, small covered jars served as caddies for powdered tea. This small caddy has a matte blue-gray body and a wooden lid, carved with an openwork vine motif. Blue-and-tan speckled glaze cascades from its mouth. The caddy was probably made during the late Edo period (19th century).</p> |
| BF792 | <p>The Virgin Mary and Christ Child sit enthroned in glory in this panel made in late medieval Siena. Christ's rather pneumatic physique reflects both the Byzantine icon tradition as well as an emergent naturalism. Accompanying Mary and Christ are two prayerful angels and the early Christian saints Antony Abbot and Katherine of Alexandria; a small Crucifixion occupies the gable. This image was the center panel of a triptych, whose wings would have displayed the Annunciation and other saints.</p> |
| BF86 | <p>A Buddhist monk, seen in three-quarter view, sits in a high-backed chair draped with an emerald-green cloth. He wears a blue-and-scarlet costume and a serene expression. The instrument he holds is a ceremonial dragon-headed fly whisk, which symbolizes the "sweeping away" of distraction and ignorance. In the upper-left corner, an inscription identifies the monk as "Great Master Shijin." Portraits of revered monastics are traditionally displayed in Buddhist monasteries as icons of spiritual ancestors for living monks and nuns.</p> |
| 01.05.34 | <p>This block-front chest of drawers gets its name from the three protruding and curved-in blocks on the front. The chest's boney ball-and-claw feet suggest that it originated in New England. The shell carving below was a popular feature on 18th-century furniture. Carvers, joiners, and other craftsmen constructed this chest. The costly, exotic mahogany surface reflected the higher social status of its owner, Mrs. C. N. Perkin. Three painted pine boards behind the chest, however, reveal a cost-saving measure during the chest's construction.</p> |
| BF814 | <p>A young woman, possibly a shepherdess, searches the sky for a bird released from a small birdcage. This work alludes to the loss of feminine virtue, a popular subject for Nicolas Lancret and his aristocratic patrons. By not depicting the bird itself, Lancret emphasized the permanence of this loss. The bird cannot be recaptured, and the woman's innocence cannot be recovered. In a clever visual twist, Dr. Barnes installed an iron bird to the upper right of the painting.</p> |
| BF783 | <p>An unknown woman poses against a blue background in three-quarter view, looking outward and smiling slightly. She is dressed simply yet smartly in a black-and-white robe, hood, and stole. This intimate, small-scale portrait was probably a commemorative gift for a family member or friend.</p> |
| BF333 | <p>A flayed rabbit lies splayed on a white cloth, its clouded eye just visible. Soutine has given us a bird's-eye view of its innards and musculoskeletal system and—perhaps most affectingly—of its furry hind feet, still intact, that preserve the memory of the living, hopping animal. Here, Soutine transformed his studies of Old Master still lives (particularly by Rembrandt, albeit enhanced with new material from local butchers) into a suffocating, visionary realism.</p> |
| BF1087 | <p>The four figures seen here, all elegant in dress and demeanor, represent the cultivation of virtuous womanhood—a traditional Confucian principle that was given special emphasis during the Qing dynasty. Three women stand around a table, perhaps discussing the surrounding books and scrolls; a girl prepares hot water. Though the delicate bodies seem to float in space, the furnishings are rendered with a mathematical perspective that may have been adapted from Western images collected in China during this period.</p> |
| BF813 | <p>Rubens depicts the Archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a son by the power of the Holy Spirit. Behind Gabriel, a ring of cherubs encircles a dove, representing the Holy Spirit. God the Father sits high above, resting his arm on a large sphere and extending his scepter downward. In the foreground, below Mary, is a group of sybils (female prophets). The movement, dynamism, and theatrical gestures are all characteristic of Rubens's work.</p> |
| BF400 | <p>A young woman—probably Perdriat herself—lounges on a balcony. She holds a tranquil cat in her undulating arms, which mimic the animal's limbs and tail. The woman's uncanny, upward gaze suggests her immersion in fantasies or memories, the dominant theme in Perdriat's self-portraits.</p> |
| BF193 | <p>A figure sits against a blood-red background, gazing out at the viewer through large blue eyes. Soutine uses the familiar conventions of portraiture—note the folded hands and the three-quarter view pose—and then explodes tradition with fiery colors and undulating sweeps of paint. The hands are especially expressive—pinks and oranges applied in crude, broad strokes, with a few patches of bare canvas showing through.</p> |
| BF1020 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. This retablo depicts Saint Barbara, who holds a monstrance in her right hand. The saint was traditionally was shown with a crown but instead the artist depicts dramatic plumes falling from her head.</p> |
| BF8 | <p>All eyes (including the dog's) are on the enticing basket of freshly picked apples. Renoir probably painted this canvas at Essoyes, the home village of his wife, Aline, on the border of Champagne and northern Burgundy, in 1890—the year in which the couple were married. The seated woman with the embellished hat is likely Aline, and the young boy is likely the couple's son Pierre, but the girl remains unidentified. Unusually, Renoir depicts a financial transaction, highlighting the class distinctions then emerging from the era's rapid industrialization</p> |
| BF913 | <p>During the 1920s, Matisse spent many months painting in Nice, in the South of France. In this languid and serene picture, two women relax by an open window with a view of palm trees on the water. One of the figures is likely the dancer Henriette Darricarrère, one of Matisse's favorite models, and the other could be his daughter, Marguerite. The curves of the bodies resting in plush chairs offer a soothing contrast with the rectangular forms of the window, shutters, and table.</p> |
| BF262 | <p>For a long time the identity of this bearded man was unknown. Recent scholarship reveals that it is very likely a portrait of Mathijs Jansz Boeckels, a watchmaker from the Dutch city of Haarlem. This explains the emphasis of the gold timepiece at lower right; though small, the object gleams with importance. Boeckels came from a long line of prominent Mennonite watchmakers. His clothing is appropriately dark and simple, reflecting Mennonite restraint; moreover he lacks the showy white cuffs typically worn by the Dutch well-to-do.</p> |
| BF569 | <p>Henri Matisse shows us the interior of his studio at Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris. At right is a screen with a green robe draped over it, behind which models could dress and undress. Matisse liked to reference his own works in his paintings. Several of the artist's works appear here, including the canvases on the walls and the sculpture on the table, which also appears in the Barnes's large <em>Music Lesson</em>.</p> |
| BF801 | <p>Pater was the only student accepted by Jean-Antoine Watteau, the French Rococo master known for his aristocratic pleasure scenes, called fêtes galantes. This small, erotically charged panel, likely a collaboration by both artists, depicts a tryst set on the banks of a lagoon. The lush, otherworldly landscape is dominated by pinks and blues. As the woman extends her bare leg, she looks at her gallant companion; her raised hand seems to suggest that he has taken the flirtation a little too far. Voyeurism abounds in this picture: a figure peeps at the lovers from behind one tree, and a group of playful putti observes from another.</p> |
| BF144 | <p>Above but not too far from the encroachment of new constructions along the edge of Paris, Renoir captures a view of the city from an upstairs window in his house on the hill of Montmartre. Renoir's home was situated in a relatively rural area, on a cul-de-sac known as the Château des Brouillards. The intrusive block building that dominates the middle ground hints at the impermanence of Renoir's verdant oasis—while underscoring the intersection between impressionism and industrialization.</p> |
| BF1150 | <p>A Scottish immigrant to the United States, John Kane spent most of his life as a manual laborer and began to paint at age 67 without any formal training. His works often depict urban or rural landscapes, images taken from American history, and remembered scenes of his Scottish homeland. Here Kane captures a young woman as she descends a flight of garden stairs. The artist's lifelong dedication to detail and pattern can be seen in the attention he pays to the individual bricks on the path and the stripes on his subject's stockings.</p> |
| BF938 | <p>This painting exemplifies the drastic shift in Renoir's style during the mid-1880s. After several years of working in an impressionist mode defined by loose brushwork and broken forms, Renoir decided to emulate the stability and solid forms he saw in earlier painting traditions. In this portrait of a woman holding a fan, paint is smooth, contours are unbroken, and the composition is carefully designed. Impressionist spontaneity has given way to order and balance.</p> |
| BF2527 | <p>This tiny, fantastic cityscape seems to contain skyscrapers (some stacked up like blocks), neurotic trees, a UFO, and a wide river navigated by various vessels, including sailboats, a tall ship, a scull, and perhaps a submarine. The composition resembles the city-mountains that Wols had begun to paint in the early-to-mid-1940s—but he more commonly used gouache, tube marks, and especially explosive or branching forms from c. 1946, perhaps to emphasize meetings between the plastic and nonobjective worlds.</p> |
| BF978 | <p>Young Lincoln in a white shirt wields an ax to help build the family's log cabin, partially constructed in the background. Although he was seven when he moved to Indiana, here the future president appears to be an adolescent. This painting is one of four by Pippin depicting moments in Lincoln's life. The series was part of a larger body of Depression-era arts and literature that portrayed Lincoln as a mythic figure in American history, reflecting his significance in the collective imagination of African Americans.</p> |
| BF818 | <p>In this sunlit Provençal scene, two women relax in a flowery field near a tall tree; the red roofs of a small town dot the distant hills. Renoir weaves the land and figures into a tapestry-like network of soft, bright brushstrokes. Indeed, the artist described his late-career ambition to merge his figures with their surroundings: "I'm struggling with my figures in order to make them one with the landscape that serves as their background and I want people to feel that they are not flat, and that my trees are not flat either."</p> |
| BF796 | <p>This intensely colored and rapidly executed painting depicts four courtesans in an ambiguous setting. The demimonde was a popular subject in 19th-century art and literature, as artists and writers found in the subject a ready means to express their ideas about modernity. This painting's unusual square format and size suggest that it was trimmed or cut from a larger canvas. Despite the small size, the figures' wild gesticulations infuse the composition with a rhythmic energy that is barely contained by the boundaries of the canvas.</p> |
| BF889 | <p>Painted during Matisse's fourth sojourn in Nice, this scene captures an easy afternoon of games, with the artist's daughter, Marguerite, on the left and occasional model Henriette Darricarrère to the right. Although the female model is omniscient during Matisse's Nice period, it was not until 1921 that he began to include more than one in his compositions. Here, each figure absorbs herself in the game and appears oblivious to the presence of the painter. Their quiet focus is matched by the uncharacteristically restrained floral patterns on the hotel's sheer window curtains and Marguerite's blue blouse.</p> |
| BF829 | <p>The Dutch painter Gerrit Berckheyde is known for his crisp depictions of architectural monuments and urban spaces. Unusual for the artist, this work displays careful attention to human figures and their activities in presenting an idealized vision of urban life. While one woman leans over a laundry basket, another beats a garment; a third pulls water out of a well. The central figure walks with a herd of goats, perhaps returning from the market; another carries a baby atop a wagon.</p> |
| BF942 | <p>This work is currently on loan to the exhibition "Seurat and the Sea" at The Courtauld Gallery, London, February 13 – May 17, 2026 Seurat depicts the port of Honfleur, located at the mouth of the Seine on France's Atlantic coast. Utilizing the pointillist technique, he instills the busy port with an unexpected sense of stillness. Logically, the large ship and sailboat at center should both be traveling forward, given the steam trailing into the sky and the unfurled sails, but neither seems to move. The composition is further anchored by the inclusion of a cruciform mooring post, whose stark shadow suggests the work was painted in the early afternoon.</p> |
| BF1169 | <p>In the mid-1870s, Cézanne briefly turned his attention to the depiction of laborers. These small canvases bear a lightness and freedom of expression that reflect Cézanne's practice of painting out of doors and his desire to escape the frenetic pace of life in Paris. Here, his choice of subject may have been informed by artists he admired such as Thomas Couture, who declared in 1867 that "Our workmen have not been represented; they remain yet to be put on canvas." Indeed, mid-19th-century artists often chose to depict the common laborer and rural poverty, in defiance of the French upper class, who considered such themes to be politically subversive.</p> |
| BF951 | <p>Four nude female figures pose by the edge of a pool in a glade. The bathers theme originated in the Renaissance, symbolizing the harmony of nature and the female body. Cézanne alluded to this tradition by quoting famous classical sculpture: the standing figure, for instance, stretches her arm in imitation of an athlete by Lysippos, the classical Greek sculptor. But Cézanne departed from the classical ideal—and from the current impressionist concern with the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere—to search for the structure undergirding the figures and the landscape.</p> |
| BF361 | <p>A British poet and journalist, Beatrice Hastings moved to Paris in 1914, where she quickly became absorbed into the thriving avant-garde scene in Montparnasse. Hastings met Modigliani, and the pair began a stormy two-year relationship. In this portrait, Modigliani experiments with cubism, translating his sitter into sharp, blocky forms. At one time there was a strip of newspaper pasted to the surface; traces of the newsprint ink are visible in the background, just below her name.</p> |
| BF812 | <p>The biblical King David strums his harp, performing the music of heaven in concert with five angels. Ornate fictive architecture frames this celestial tableau. Despite its small size, Rubens's painting displays a striking monumentality: this is due to its status as a <em>modello</em> (preparatory study) for a tapestry in his <em>Triumph of the Eucharist</em> cycle. The tapestries were displayed on special occasions in the church of the Convent of Descalzas Reales, Madrid.</p> |
| BF260 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026.</p> |
| BF261 | <p>Léopold Zborowski was a Polish-born artist, poet, and art dealer who moved to Paris in 1913. He began acting as Modigliani's manager in 1916, commissioning and selling his works and turning a large room in his apartment into a studio for the artist. In this portrait, we see the stylized features that are characteristic of Modigliani's work: an elegantly elongated neck, icy-blue eyes, a prominent, narrow nose, and a small mouth set within a heart-shaped face.</p> |
| BF962 | <p>This is a copy of a painting by the early 16th-century Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, known for his fantastical illustrations of religious themes. Saint Anthony kneels at the center; around him, hybrid beings represent the supernatural torments and worldly temptations he experienced during his exile in the desert. The saint's raised right hand can be seen as an expression of faith and perseverance. The burning village in the background refers to Saint Anthony's fire, a disease whose victims invoked the name of the saint for relief.</p> |
| BF96 | <p>In the mid-late 1870s, Cézanne painted a series of small-format pictures of bathers in which he explored the different relationships between figures and the landscape. Here three bathers gather on a riverbank framed by two trees. Their bodies are intentionally awkward, with the pose of the hunched-over bather at left mirrored by the thick tree trunk next to her. Cézanne was more interested in the equilibrium of his carefully constructed composition than the conventional beauty of bathing females.</p> |
| BF420 | <p>This painting is most likely a copy of a famous 15th-century portrait of King Charles VII of France by Jean Fouquet. The original work, now in the Musée du Louvre, was a major source of inspiration for artists like Chaim Soutine (also in this gallery), who spent hours studying the traditions of art in the galleries of Paris.</p> |
| 01.04.27 | <p>Mary C. Liel originally stitched this sampler in the 18th century to record different types of stylized letters, and today this item preserves her needleworking skills in thread. The canvas's long, vertical length made an ideal surface for Liel to practice different embroidery stitches and to record lettering styles so that she could refer to them in the future. When not in use, a sampler like this would have been rolled up and tucked away with other sewing supplies.</p> |
| 01.04.23a | <p>Produced around 1800 in the American Northeast, these andirons would have held logs in an open fireplace. Typically manufactured in pairs, andirons allowed air to circulate underneath a fire, fostering a more efficient blaze and less smoke. Around the turn of the 19th century, artisans began to produce shorter andirons in order to accommodate new, smaller fireplace openings that slanted inwards to help project heat into a room. The brass ball tops, sharp knees, and pointed "penny feet" give these accessories an animated presence.</p> |
| 01.04.23b | <p>Produced around 1800 in the American Northeast, these andirons would have held logs in an open fireplace. Typically manufactured in pairs, andirons allowed air to circulate underneath a fire, fostering a more efficient blaze and less smoke. Around the turn of the 19th century, artisans began to produce shorter andirons in order to accommodate new, smaller fireplace openings that slanted inwards to help project heat into a room. The brass ball tops, sharp knees, and pointed "penny feet" give these accessories an animated presence.</p> |
| 01.04.20ab | <p>Warmers, also known as braziers, were common in many countries before the advent of central heating. People would fill these objects with embers and carry them to locations lacking stoves, such as a church or a workshop. Warmers vary greatly in terms of form and material. This copper example is relatively ornate, with paw feet, a fine fleur-de-lis pattern around the inner rim, and cutout designs on the sides and lid.</p> |
| BF81 | <p>Five horses and five men move across a wooded landscape. The horizontal space and soft, stippled brushstrokes create an impression of vastness and mystery. The men's costumes identify them as foreigners (possibly Mongols), as do the leopard and tiger skins worn by two horses. The subject of men leading horses was sometimes a metaphor for government, and so this handscroll could allude to the collapse in 1368 of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty and their succession by the Han Chinese Ming Dynasty.</p> |
| BF833 | <p>This painting was originally part of a larger altarpiece, the central panel of which depicted a Virgin and Child (now at the Accademia in Florence). While the original site is unknown, like all altarpieces it would have served as a focal point of liturgical devotion, especially during the Mass. The painting shows the bust of the Apostle Bartholomew holding a knife, the tool of his martyrdom. After Bartholomew converted a pagan king to Christianity, the king's brother commanded his death by flaying.</p> |
| BF80 | <p>Painted on silk, this portrait represents a Qing dynasty (1644-1911) noblewoman. Her blue robe is typical of the attire worn by Chinese royalty, officials, and their families during the 17th and 18th centuries. The front of the robe bears an embroidered badge called a Mandarin Square, which indicated a person's rank through the use of animal imagery. Such symbols would have been readily understood at the time.</p> |
| BF869 | <p>As described in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was circumcised eight days after his birth, in accord with Jewish tradition. Mary holds the infant while Joseph prays and the priest prepares to perform the operation. The biblical figures are joined by two contemporary noblewomen, a monk, and a burgher. The depiction of the Circumcision on a church altar links this event with the rite of the Eucharist, which reenacts Christ's ultimate sacrifice of flesh as an adult. The connection would have been especially clear if this painting had been displayed within an altarpiece, alongside an image of the Crucifixion.</p> |
| BF443 | <p>This triptych, or three-sectioned painting, was created by an unidentified follower of the Dutch painter and engraver Lucas van Leyden. Van Leyden was known for his detailed rendering of objects, seen here in the finely painted fur around the green robe and the glass beads along the trim. The scene is continuous across all three landscapes, an invention of the late 15th century; the tradition had long been to treat each section as a wholly separate picture.</p> |
| BF1003 | <p>Gherardo Starnina produced this panel as part of a much larger altarpiece featuring the Virgin and Child surrounded by angels and saints; other fragments of the original composition are dispersed across several museums and private collections. The Barnes piece shows an angel singing and playing a vielle (a medieval stringed instrument). The blue shapes along the panel's right side represent a cloud and the edge of a mandorla, an almond-shaped halo that usually envelops the body of the Virgin Mary in the art of late medieval Italy. </p> |
| BF798 | <p>In this this small Renaissance image of the Entombment of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea—until then a secret disciple—lowers Christ's corpse into a sarcophagus. Christ's mother, the Virgin Mary, kneels in distress while John the Evangelist grasps his hand. A sense of subdued grief pervades the scene. This <em>Entombment</em> is similar in its composition and dimensions to one made by Fra Angelico in 1438–40 for the central predella of the high altarpiece of San Marco, Florence, and may have served the same purpose.</p> |
| BF88 | <p>This painting was likely created by an artist in the circle of Gerard David, the influential Netherlandish painter who ran workshops in Bruges and Antwerp during the early 16th century. The Christ Child holds a set of rosary beads between his hands while the Virgin Mary holds an apple, an allusion to the forbidden fruit offered to Adam and also a symbol of the sins of mankind.</p> |
| BF968 | <p>The alternative title for this painting is "Baby, My Great Dane." De Chirico was a great lover of dogs and an advocate for their welfare. On several occasions he wove Baby, his black-and-white Harlequin Dane, into the art-historical canon. Here, Baby rests with his head over his foreleg in a barren landscape whose ground and twilit sky de Chirico seems to have borrowed from Renoir and 15th-century Italian masters. In a painting by de Chirico entitled <em>Isabella in the Paris Studio</em> (c. 1934), a composition emulating Diego Velázquez's masterwork <em>Las Meninas</em> (1656), Baby and the artist's wife greet each other next to <em>Alexandros</em> (BF960), which stands on a nearby easel.</p> |
| BF797 | <p>The Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph consecrated the baby Christ to God in the Temple of Jerusalem 40 days after his birth, in accordance with Jewish laws concerning purity and firstborn sons. Joseph brings a sacrifice of doves, the priest Simeon receives Christ on an altar, and the prophetess Anna holds a candle—a reference to the liturgical celebration of this event as Candlemas. An unusual detail is the angel who stands behind Mary. He witnesses her miraculous virgin pregnancy and connects the scene to the consecration of bread and wine as Christ's body and blood in the Christian Mass, at which event angels were believed to flock the altar. This is an appropriate addition insofar as <em>The Presentation</em> is a fragment of a larger, lost altarpiece. The artist's abstractly elegant International Gothic style was inspired by the works of Gherardo Starnina, whose <em>Music-Making Angel</em> is also on this wall.</p> |
| BF467 | <p>Charles Prendergast was the brother of the well-known American painter Maurice Prendergast. Though primarily a maker of furniture and frames, Charles also produced paintings. Here, he approximates the look of a medieval panel painting, using tempera and gold leaf on a ground covered in gesso. Incised lines delineate the figures. While the subject draws from traditional images of the Annunciation, this is not a Christian image so much as a revelation of the spiritual in earthly things, a common preoccupation for the Arts and Crafts movement in which Prendergast participated.</p> |
| BF878 | <p>Although Matisse's lively sketch depicting his wife, Amélie, is closely related to <em>The Red Madras Headdress,</em> it is not a preparatory study but an independent work. In both works, Amélie wears the same Indian red scarf headdress embroidered with gold thread and an identical robe, but the compositional elements differ. For example, in the present canvas, rapidly sketched contours in graphite guide the application of color. Broad sweeps provide the general idea of the movement of the pose—one whose serpentine lines testify to Matisse's admiration of the work of the 19th-century French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.</p> |
| BF852 | <p>In this German painting, the Virgin Mary gazes warmly at the infant Christ as she offers him a piece of red fruit. A closer look reveals that the lush landscape behind them is far from ordinary: pearls and coral lie near the stream, for example, while flames rise between unharmed trees. These details refer to supplications to Mary and Christ found in contemporary prayer books, suggesting that this painting would have been used to help guide the viewer during prayer recitations.</p> |
| 01.04.48 | <p>Christ has just died in this scene of the Crucifixion, which is most likely based on a print by Albrecht Dürer. His eyes are closed, and blood pours from his stigmata and side. To the left, his mother, the Virgin Mary (dressed in a blue mantle), turns away in sadness. Immediately behind her is John the Evangelist; at front, Mary Magdalene grasps the foot of the Cross and gazes up to Christ. A motley group of antagonists has gathered at right. This plaque was probably mounted in a wooden frame with other scenes of the Passion of Christ, constituting a resplendent small-scale monument for private devotional use.</p> |
| 01.04.46 | <p>This painted enamel plaque, based on a print by Albrecht Dürer, shows the Resurrection of Christ, two days after his death on the Cross. Christ stands triumphantly, right arm outstretched, on the displaced lid of the sarcophagus from which he has just emerged. The two soldiers in the foreground react in amazement; the soldier in the background still sleeps. This plaque was probably mounted in a wooden frame with other scenes of the Passion of Christ, constituting a resplendent small-scale monument for private devotional use.</p> |
| 01.19.37a | <p>An unidentified French maker fabricated this large andiron, one of a pair, in the 17th or 18th century. Andirons like these supported logs in open fireplaces to improve air circulation, resulting in less smoke and more even cooking temperatures. The three hooks on the front of this rather elaborate example would have once supported an iron bar that held cooking pots. The temperature of the pots could be adjusted by moving the bars up and down.</p> |
| 01.19.37b | <p>An unidentified French maker fabricated this large andiron, one of a pair, in the 17th or 18th century. Andirons like these supported logs in open fireplaces to improve air circulation, resulting in less smoke and more even cooking temperatures. The three hooks on the front of this rather elaborate example would have once supported an iron bar that held cooking pots. The temperature of the pots could be adjusted by moving the bars up and down.</p> |
| 01.19.06 | <p>This wrought-iron spit holder, created by an unidentified Spanish craftsperson in the 18th or 19th century, takes the shape of a horse and rider perched above fleur-de-lis scrollwork. The invoice from Albert Barnes's purchase of the piece simply identifies it as an "animal," but it is more than just decoration. A spit for roasting meat would have been placed in the rack created by the horse's tail. The spit could be moved up and down in the rack to adjust the cooking temperature.</p> |
| 01.19.78 | <p>This 18th-century Pennsylvania German blanket chest was made by European settlers to store personal items and household goods. It is one of several in the collection. Such furniture had a personal meaning for Albert Barnes, whose grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch. "Early in life I became acquainted with their furniture, their cooking," Dr. Barnes wrote. "When I got on 'easy street' I started to collect Pennsylvania Dutch articles."</p> |
| BF744 | <p>The crisp forms and saturated colors of this small work are hallmarks of reverse painting on glass, a technique used by artist Angelo Pinto. Here, the artist depicts the Fall of Icarus, an ancient Greek myth about a boy who fell to his death after the sun melted the beeswax on the feather wings made by his father. In Pinto's version, Daedalus stands in the foreground and pleads with his son not to fly too close to the sun, advice that comes too late for the ill-fated Icarus.</p> |
| BF182 | <p>The female nude was a cherished motif at the beginning of the 20th century, forming a bridge between European tradition and the formal experimentations of modern artists. Pascin shared an interest in this classic subject with his Parisian contemporaries Pablo Picasso, Kees van Dongen, and Amedeo Modigliani, among others. Recalling Cézanne's work, here he depicts a model standing in his studio, using a rich palette of ocher and blue tones to form the figure out of faceted masses.</p> |
| BF382 | <p>Saltimbanques, or traveling circus performers, were a favorite theme of Pablo Picasso's. These entertainers were a common spectacle in Paris, performing in the public squares of neighborhoods such as Montmartre, where Picasso lived from 1904 to 1909. The performers seen here, likely siblings, seem to be gazing out at the audience, as if the show has just ended. The landscape behind them is probably a stage curtain.</p> |
| BF198 | <p>Forced to leave Paris because of the First World War, Bulgarian-born Pascin emigrated to the United States in 1914. He then toured the South and went to Cuba. There, he dedicated himself to street scenes of Havana, which he published in his <em>Caribbean Sketchbook</em>, as seen in this painting. Here he renders the picturesque setting of a street lined with houses and lush vegetation in vivid colors.</p> |
| BF883 | <p>This solemnity of this scene speaks to an important part of Rouault's Catholic faith: seeing the humanity and spiritual light in people (such as clowns) who lived on the fringes of society. The painting's jewel tones and black outlines mimic the stained glass of a Gothic cathedral. The picture's subject matter and rough brushstrokes uphold a directive from Rouault's friend, the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, that sacred art made during the modern era should reflect modern painting techniques.</p> |
| BF879 | <p>Woman and Screen, which shows Antoinette Arnoud in the studio, is a close-up, frontal view. She takes up almost half of the space. This zoom effect, very common in the work of Edgar Degas, is unusual for Matisse. Woman and Screen also recalls some of Edouard Vuillard's domestic scenes.</p> |
| BF455 | <p>Best known for his futurist works, Severini painted this little mandolin-playing figure as part of a widespread revival of classical aesthetics following the upheavals of World War I. Severini strove for an "aesthetic of compass and number." He organized his composition according to the golden ratio, imitating the monuments of classical Antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. The figure is 'pulcinella'—-a stock character from the traditional commedia dell'arte theater.</p> |
| BF125 | <p>A tangle of yellow-and-red flowers emerge from a brownish vase. Zig-zagging strokes animate the table; dashes of lime green electrify the bouquet and the garden glimpsed through a doorway. (The composition, blocked at left and with a suggestion of deeper space at right, echoes that of Henri Matisse's nearby Studio with Goldfish). Soutine's bouquet, arguably the most bilious at the Barnes, bears witness to a comment that he "threw colors on the canvas like poisoned butterflies" and challenges viewers to analyze their own aesthetic responses, whatever those may be.</p> |
| 01.02.31 | <p>Although the original location for this weather vane remains a mystery, it may have crowned a pilgrimage church in France. This would be in keeping with the guardian role that the archangel Raphael, the winged figure represented on the right, served for travelers.</p> |
| 01.03.36 | <p>There are two main ways of adding decoration to metalwork. Decoration that is part of an object's shape must be created while the piece is still being molded in the forge's fires. The handle of this spatula was given its curving form by the blacksmith while the material was red-hot. Decoration that is done to the surface of metalwork, like the "X" marks on this handle, would have been cut away once the metal was cold.</p> |
| 01.03.02 | <p>In the upper central portion of this Late Gothic lock mechanism, a hooded figure holding a staff and possibly a candle stands in an architectural niche. He may be guarding the door below, which is adorned with a crown and crest and opens onto the lock. The pinnacled niche and the bands of flowing tracery resemble contemporaneous stone- or woodcarving, attesting to the transposition of designs between media that was so popular during this period. Of these materials, iron was valued for its strength and pliability: an ironworker could chisel, cut, file, stamp, incise, and polish his material to infuse it with his creative vision.</p> |
| 01.03.08 | <p>Two fire-breathing salamanders surmounted by crowns and surrounded by flames occupy the lunettes of this large horizontal lock. Salamanders were believed to be fireproof and were therefore a symbol of virtue, capable of withstanding the burn of temptation; King François I of France (r. 1515–47) adopted the animal as his emblem. Other references to France include the small fleur-de-lis designs punched in the lunettes' spandrels and the vase of lilies standing at center. The finesse with which the iron is worked—mainly cold, with chisels and files—suggests that this lock was made for a royal residence by a master locksmith, at a moment of Romantic taste. A. G. Moreau made a nearly identical lock for the Chateau de Blois.</p> |
| 01.03.32 | <p>This semicircular domed cage features squiggle lines interspersed between the bars and vase-shaped spindles at the bottom. It would have screened the opening in the partition separating the penitent and priest within a confessional, a type of small-scale architecture whose usual arrangement had the seated priest facing outward and the penitent kneeling perpendicular to him. Most screens were flat, but confessionals took many forms, and perhaps this cage was shaped to accommodate praying hands.</p> |
| 01.11.45 | <p>This medieval key features a rectangular, toothy bit with two circles punched out of its interior. The bit connects via a thin, rolled shaft to a diamond-shaped bow with another, larger cut-out circle. The key was made most likely for everyday use, probably for a door or a large chest. The key's strong, simple geometries resemble the monumental tracery designs created for stained-glass windows from the same period.</p> |
| BF1058 | <p>John the Baptist was a preacher who baptized Christ in the River Jordan. The German artist of this small devotional painting has depicted John wearing clothes made of camel's hair, as is described in the Gospels. Wrapped in a red cloak, John holds a book with a lamb sitting on top of it. The clothing, book, and lamb are common symbols depicted alongside John by artists so that viewers could recognize him. The lamb is associated with John because when he first saw Christ he exclaimed, "Behold, the Lamb of God." The artist has skillfully tooled gold leaf to create a pattern behind the saint similar to the damask on the green seat he rests on.</p> |
| BF854 | <p>When Albert Barnes purchased this painting in 1928, it was attributed to the Venetian Renaissance artist Titian. Recent scholarship suggests the portrait is instead by a member of the school of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto, who worked in Brescia, a city in Lombardy under the influence of Venice. The unknown sitter and his son are shown in half-length in front of a neutral background. Patrician families commissioned such portraits such as a reflection of their stature.</p> |
| BF150 | <p>Renoir's portraits of children often derive considerable charm from the artist's ability to depict his subjects absorbed in a task. In this canvas, Renoir's youngest son, Claude, or "Coco," grasps a red pencil and focuses on a piece of paper while his beloved nursemaid Gabrielle looks on tenderly. The proximity and mirroring between the two subjects, among Renoir's favorite models, impart a palpable sense of intimacy, emphasizing their harmonious relationship. Looking back at the portraits painted by his father of him, Claude would remark: "To secure a little stillness, my father chose poses that allowed me to play or get interested in something."</p> |
| BF863 | <p>This panel is part of an altarpiece depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, separated by spiral columns. To the left, the newborn Mary is presented to her mother, Saint Anne (in white). The kneeling male figure is probably a donor. To the right, the child Mary reads diligently. The Gothic setting helped viewers to empathize with the events of sacred history; Dr. Barnes appreciated the graceful decorative effect of the sloping tile floor.</p> |
| BF1022 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a title given to the Virgin Mary as the patron of the Carmelite order. In this role, she is usually depicted in a brown habit, holding the Christ Child. Here the Virgin and Christ each hold a scapular, a garment worn by Carmelite monks.</p> |
| BF545 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026.</p> |
| BF22 | <p>Honoré Daumier was one of the greatest caricaturists of the 19th century, creating thousands of keenly observed images of Parisian social types. This painting is actually a study for a more complex work, <em>The Miller, His Son, and the Ass</em> (Burrell Collection, Glasgow), based on a fable in which a traveling father and son are continuously harassed by passersby. Here, however, Daumier focuses not on the main subjects but on their hecklers, conveying the rudeness of their behavior through clumsy, contorted body language.</p> |
| BF306 | <p>In 1912 Glackens traveled to Paris on behalf of Albert Barnes in search of modern art. Among the leaders of the European avant-garde at that time was Henri Matisse, whose bold experimentations in color and decorative motifs helped inspire this work by Glackens. Seated frontally with hands folded in her lap, a woman turns her head, revealing the full plumage of her fashionable hat. Contrasting color pervades the composition, merging figure and decoration; the russet red hair, boots, and sofa complement her blue eyes, the blue wallpaper, and the accents on her white lace sleeves.</p> |
| BF946 | <p>Born in Scotland, the self-taught painter John Kane moved to the United States as a young man and worked for years as a manual laborer in the steel mills, coal mines, and railroads of Ohio and Pennsylvania. After a train accident left him with a permanent disability, Kane found work as a painter of houses and train cars. Around this time, Kane also began to produce paintings of familiar landscapes and sometimes even painted over photographs. Here Kane depicts an idyllic scene of boats floating along the Susquehanna River as it winds its way through Pennsylvania's Dauphin County.</p> |
| BF809 | <p>The elegant lady depicted in this painting isn't known to us, but she closely resembles portraits of Lady Marie de Gaignon and of Queen Elisabeth of Austria painted by the French court artist François Clouet. The lace, pearls, and embroidery of her costume are rendered in exquisite detail, and she meets the viewer's gaze with light eyes that nonetheless stand out against her eggshell-white skin. This small portrait was probably a commemorative or diplomatic gift upholding the lady's adherence to contemporary standards of beauty and decorum.</p> |
| BF864 | <p>This fragment of an altarpiece shows the young Virgin Mary praying in the Temple of Jerusalem. According to the apocryphal Gospel of James, Mary's parents pledged her to the temple at age three, in thanks for the miracle of her being born without sin (the Immaculate Conception). Here, Mary is an exemplar of piety for the kneeling woman and her five daughters, the female members of the family who donated the altarpiece. The haloed women standing behind them are probably their name saints, magnified to show their spiritual importance: we can identify Saint Apollonia holding a tooth in pincers and Mary Magdalene with a jar of oil.</p> |
| BF104 | <p>Van Gogh painted this sketch of a brothel parlor while working in close dialogue with fellow artist Paul Gauguin. In the fall of 1888, Van Gogh convinced Gauguin to join him in Arles in the South of France, and the two artists often painted there side by side. They also visited brothels together, partly to find figural subjects for painting. Encouraged by Gauguin, Van Gogh painted this work from memory, capturing the types of people—women in bright dresses drinking with men, soldiers wearing distinctive red hats—encountered in such a setting. He used an underlying blue wash to suggest the lurid atmosphere.</p> |
| BF315 | <p>In one of Soutine's more narrative scenes, a figure in brown walks up an impossibly steep slope while others gaze down from above. A vista of hilly farmland convulses across the canvas. According to Dr. Barnes's colleague Violette de Mazia, creative departures from physical reality—such as the figure's sideways gait—"result from the artist's making instrumental use of his subject…for the expression of his experience of some aspect of the world he encounters." Taking in the amalgamated whirl of land, trees, and sky, one wonders how else someone might traverse a landscape of Soutine's?</p> |
| BF2093 | <p>According to Christian legend, Saint George, a Roman soldier, heroically killed a dragon that was terrorizing a Libyan city, causing the grateful citizens to convert to Christianity. In this painting, Odilon Redon presents the climactic moment of the slaying but makes the gore and the action rather difficult to see, pushing it off to the side. Instead, he relies on the fiery colors of the landscape to create drama.</p> |
| BF300 | <p>Mont Sainte-Victoire is inextricably bound to the sense of place of Aix-en-Provence, and to the art and person of Cézanne. Here we encounter the mountain gradually, over the green plain of the Arc valley. The angled perspective of the fields and farm buildings, the clumps of trees, and the majestic mountain create a forceful rhythm countered by the soft blue sky. Cézanne explores the relationships between the nature of things and how we perceive them, through an essentially pastoral and Mediterranean theme.</p> |
| BF987 | <p>Renoir's skill at rendering his subjects in a flattering light meant that his portraits were in high demand among Parisian bourgeois society. This small portrait likely depicts Georges Charpentier, the publisher of naturalist novelist Émile Zola and founder of the publication <em>La vie moderne</em>, for which Renoir was an illustrator. Charpentier and his wife, Marguerite, were important early collectors of impressionism, and Renoir secured other portrait commissions through their patronage.</p> |
| BF1031 | <p>During the Muslim occupation of the Spanish city of Atocha, a child dressed as a pilgrim is said to have visited a group of starving Christian prisoners, bringing a basket of food and a gourd with water that remained full even after everyone had been fed. The child, actually a manifestation of Christ, had answered the prayers of the prisoners' families. Here, the Christ Child is shown in a contemporary pilgrim's robe, cape, and brimmed hat. He holds a basket in his right hand and a pilgrim's staff in his left.</p> |
| BF800 | <p>Working in Venice during the 16th century, Veronese employed a workshop of apprentice artists to complete his commissions. His workshop, called a <em>bottega</em>, produced many versions of this well-known biblical scene. Christ, at center, dips his feet in the River Jordan as John kneels and pours water over his head. The dove represents the Spirit of God, who descended from Heaven after Christ's Baptism to reaffirm his divinity.</p> |
| BF843 | <p>As highways for the transport of merchandise and livestock, and as rich fishing grounds, the canals and rivers in the Netherlands linked countryside, city, and sea. Jan van Goyen devoted his career to painting the rhythms of these vital waterways in panoramic works dotted with ferries, fishing boats, castles, windmills, and church steeples.</p> |
| BF873 | <p>Saint Francis (1181–1226) kneels at the entrance to a cave, meditating on a human skull, while his friend Brother Leo clasps his hands in prayer. The skull is both the locus of contemplation and a symbol of death and hope for the afterlife. Francis was the patron saint of Toledo, El Greco's adopted home. The artist most likely created this image as a devotional aide. The otherworldly light, vibrating brushwork, and dramatically attenuated figures inspired modern artists like Cézanne and Picasso.</p> |
| BF280 | <p>Parrots and parakeets have long been highly prized collector's items in Europe, and over the centuries artists have used the birds to evoke symbolic connotations ranging from virginity, during the Renaissance, to surrogate lovers, during the 19th century. Cézanne was no doubt aware of the theme's art historical lineage and the contemporary portrayals by his peers. His first representations of this subject date to the 1860s, and like the present canvas, draw on Dutch engravings for inspiration. According to Cézanne's son, Paul, <em>Girl with Birdcage</em> was intended as a gift for the artist's pious younger sister, Marie, who was attended religious services every day.</p> |
| BF302 | <p>Both out of paternal pride and financial gain (from portraits commissioned by wealthy middle-class parents), Renoir was motivated to paint children throughout his career. These canvases embodied a kind of wholesome innocence and nostalgia that served as a counter to the drastic societal changes brought on by rapid industrialization and urbanization. As <em>Reading</em> illustrates, Renoir preferred his young models to appear unselfconscious rather than artificially posed. This helped him capture the nuances of authentic gestures and expressions. The nebulous background suggests garden greenery and perhaps hints at the transience of childhood.</p> |
| BF836 | <p>The sitter in this large portrait, shown here from the waist up, is likely a patrician from Venice. Prior to the middle of the 16th century, portraiture in Europe had traditionally been reserved for the nobility and was a sign of high status. By Tintoretto's time, however, tradesmen and artisans regularly commissioned paintings of themselves. Consequently, for the noble classes, a portrait's overall size—in addition to the depiction of a lavish costume and accessories—emerged as a way of announcing one's important status.</p> |
| BF859 | <p>Barely perceptible among the profusion of vegetation in this landscape are two female figures at center right, one standing under a tree and the other kneeling by the stream, possibly washing laundry. The setting is the Béal, a tributary of the river Cagnes near Renoir's home Les Collettes. The indistinctness of the figures highlights the way Renoir thought of them as part of the natural beauty of the scene.</p> |
| BF2 | <p>Three ripe bananas and three shiny oranges rest on a white tablecloth. Renoir offset the bananas' contours with thick white lines and encircled the oranges with the same glowing golden-brown that he used for the background. As a result, the fruits seem to vibrate with the energy of living bodies. If the recumbent bananas seem to recall reclining nudes, it's no accident: Renoir once remarked that he painted women "like beautiful fruit."</p> |
| BF867 | <p>The sitter is Frederick the Wise, Duke of Saxony, who is best known for having protected Martin Luther from the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning around 1505, Lucas Cranach worked as court painter to the duke, who granted the artist a coat of arms in 1508. Showing a dragon, the coat of arms can be seen just above Frederick's right shoulder. This was a clever way for Cranach to indicate his authorship of the painting.</p> |
| BF989 | <p><em>Mussel-Fishers at Berneval</em> was the last Renoir to enter Albert Barnes's collection. He bought the painting in 1942 after coveting it for decades: it had hung in the private collection of the famous impressionist dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who was reluctant to part with it. Renoir painted this idyllic scene of a peasant family gathering mussels during an 1879 visit to the Normandy coast.</p> |
| BF1057 | <p>Catherine of Alexandria was a martyr from the early fourth century. According to legend, she was a princess and a scholar who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, and converted to Christianity at age 14. At age 18 she was imprisoned and tortured by Maxentius, the pagan emperor. The symbol most often associated with Saint Catherine, and depicted alongside her here, is a spiked breaking wheel. When the emperor ordered her death by the wheel, it crumbled under her touch. Instead, the young martyr was beheaded. This small devotional painting by an unknown German artist depicts a forlorn Catherine wearing a martyr's crown and luxurious fur-trimmed cloak while holding a staff. The background is covered in finely tooled gold leaf.</p> |
| BF126 | <p>In 1888, Renoir spent a leisurely as well as productive summer at the home of the impressionist artist and patron Gustave Caillebotte in Petit Gennevilliers. This canvas presents a view from the south bank across the river toward the resort town of Argenteuil, concealed by the avenue of trees along the riverside. Departing from the technical experimentations that characterized his landscapes of the same period, here Renoir returns to the bold color contrasts and loose, broken brushwork that marked the "high impressionist" phase of the mid-1870s.</p> |
| BF850 | <p>In this small work painted with oil on a wooden panel, an unidentified man wearing a fur coat and black hat locks eyes with the viewer. Although we do not know the name of the artist who made this haunting image, the figure's clothing and three-quarter position of his body, along with the materials and scientific attention to detail, point to popular trends in paintings made in the Netherlands during the 16th century.</p> |
| BF271 | <p>A formidable woman sits in a red armchair, resting her head in her hand. Her multicolored face is a mask of contemplation; fingers and arms bend and twist like the limbs of trees. In placing Soutine's portrait in this grouping, Albert Barnes surely wanted to highlight its relationship with Old Masters like Jacopo Tintoretto. Barnes also saw the influence of Honoré Daumier, hanging the great caricaturist's large painting, The Ribalds, on the adjacent wall. He wrote: "From Daumier…is derived [Soutine's] method of so simplifying and distorting objects that they sometimes appear monstrous or grotesque, but are nevertheless convincing in their essential reality."</p> |
| BF1021 | <p>Active in the Catalonia region of Spain, Saint Raymond Nonnatus (d. 1240) was famous for ransoming Christian slaves from North Africa. He even gave himself up for hostage when he ran out of money, at which point his captors padlocked his lips to stop him from preaching. In this fragment of an altarpiece from Spanish New Mexico, Raymond is dressed as a cardinal and holds a monstrance (a vessel to display the consecrated host or relics) and a martyr's palm branch. The artist most likely adapted this composition from exemplars produced by the Jesuits in Mexico.</p> |
| BF444 | <p>The blue-robed figure on the left is St. Martin, a Roman knight who became the Bishop of Tours. While studying a holy text, he received a heavenly vision of five saints: Peter, Paul, the Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist, and Catherine of Alexandria. This panel was originally part of the predella, or lowest stage, of the high altarpiece of the Church of Saint Martin, Riglos, Spain.</p> |
| BF823 | <p>On his way to Galilee, Jesus rests on a well outside the Samaritan city of Sychar, seen in the background. He asks for a drink from the woman on the right, who is surprised by this request, as Samaritans and Jews did not associate. When Christ is able to identify details from her life, she says that he must be a prophet, to which Jesus replies that he is the Messiah.</p> |
| BF824 | <p>Though Gustave Courbet was best known for his early paintings of French peasants, in later decades he focused on scenes of animals, displaying his virtuosic talent for creating naturalistic depictions of stags, foxes, hounds, and birds. Here, Courbet adds two pigeons to this unconventional portrait, in which the subject turns slightly away from the viewer. Small details invite comparison between the woman and the birds. Ribbons adorn both the sitter's hair and one of the pigeons, her earring glows like a bird's eye, and the silken feathers seem to mirror the abundant waves of her hair.</p> |
| BF584 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. Self-taught artist Henri Rousseau created his enormous jungle scenes by studying the plants and taxidermy animals in Paris's natural history museums. Painted at the height of the colonial period, such works were popular with Parisian audiences for their theatrical presentation of France's faraway territories as exotic and violent.</p> |
| 01.14.38 | <p>The inscription CHRISTINA ERNSTIN announces the original owner of this Pennsylvania German chest (the backwards <em>N</em>'s seem to be the painter's personal idiosyncrasy). The front is comprised of three inset panels decorated with a white background and floral patterns; "columns" made of vertical fluting connect these areas. The S-shaped arch at center echoes a motif from late Gothic architecture, exemplifying Albert Barnes's fascination with the continuity of artistic traditions into the modern period.</p> |
| 01.14.32a | <p>Made in France during the 16th century, these two hand-wrought iron objects, called andirons, were used to support wooden logs inside domestic kitchen fireplaces. Not all andirons were as elaborate as these: there are hooks decorated with shells to support iron spits for roasting large meats along with heart-shaped hangers and basket-like cups that could hold utensils, pots, and plates while cooking.</p> |
| 01.14.32b | <p>Made in France during the 16th century, these two hand-wrought iron objects, called andirons, were used to support wooden logs inside domestic kitchen fireplaces. Not all andirons were as elaborate as these: there are hooks decorated with shells to support iron spits for roasting large meats along with heart-shaped hangers and basket-like cups that could hold utensils, pots, and plates while cooking.</p> |
| 01.04.58 | <p>This carved cosmetic palette was used for grinding colored minerals to create face and eye makeup. The grinding surface is on the underside of the object, which is where the minerals would have been mixed with oils and fats to produce colored pastes, usually applied to the face with a stick. This side is carved into the image of a bound gazelle. Animals such as ducks, elephants, fish, and hippos were popular images for these objects.</p> |
| 01.04.57 | <p>This gilt copper plaquette depicts the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan. Christ stands amid the stream as John the Baptist pours water on his head and the Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove. The lamb behind John the Baptist alludes to his words upon seeing Christ approach, "Behold the Lamb of God," while the angel to the left refers to the belief that angels infused the baptismal waters with the Holy Spirit. The plaquette was possibly set in a frame with other scenes from the life of Christ, functioning as a focus for prayer and contemplation.</p> |
| 01.04.56 | <p>The Crucifixion of Christ is shown on the central brass component of this cross. Though Christ is emaciated and pierced with nails of exaggerated prominence, his crown and upward glance express his ultimate triumph over death. The larger wrought-iron element of this cross may have been a later addition, more likely for display on a wall than on an altar.</p> |
| 01.04.54 | <p>Cleverly designed in the shape of a human figure, this small instrument was used to cut betel nut, the seed of the fruit of the areca palm. Across south Asia and the Asia Pacific region, the sliced betel nut would have been rolled in a betel leaf with slaked lime and chewed as a stimulant. Betel chew produces a bright red residue not unlike the color of the painted decoration on this cutter.</p> |
| 01.04.53 | <p>This plaque, carved in high relief, depicts a naked man and woman copulating on a bed. The central dividing line may represent part of the bedframe, while the footboard works as a baseline for the figures. Small chevron incisions around and between the figures seem to represent the woven mattress. Scenes of sex in Egyptian art are rare, and this plaque was likely a votive object for the celebration of festivals connected to fertility and the regeneration of the dead.</p> |
| 01.04.51 | <p>Three tender scenes of the baby Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Joseph fill the rectangular area of this French Gothic ivory. Above them, the squiggly line separates the gable and shows that the prayerful angel is in Heaven. The hinges on each side of the ivory reveal that it was one shutter—of probably four—of a tabernacle sheltering a central image of the Virgin and Child, whom the angel would have faced. Such tabernacles were used to stir memory, emotion, and hope in the course of private prayer. The ivory used—a fragment of an elephant's tusk—reached its destination through extensive trade networks spanning the Mediterranean and Sahara.</p> |
| 01.04.52 | <p>This horse-shaped padlock gives a lifelike impression with its arched legs, perky ears, and wide eyes. It is cast from iron or steel, with brass inlay to designate the horse's fittings and mane; the lock mechanism runs through the animal's body. It is difficult to establish a date or specific culture for the padlock, as similar ones were made in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Russia, and India from antiquity through the 19th century.</p> |
| 01.04.61 | <p>The workshops of the Embriachi family (active in Florence and Venice) mass-produced items carved in bone with wood and bone marquetry. In addition to altarpieces, they specialized in rectangular and polygonal caskets for holding documents or jewels, usually given as bridal gifts. The scenes of women and men interacting in a shallow cityscape have not been tied to a specific source, but excerpts from classical and medieval romances often appeared on bridal caskets, offering inspiration to the mind and heart alike.</p> |
| 01.04.63ab | <p>The <em>mascarons</em> (grotesque masks) and vegetal motifs that adorn these two iron bands derive from classical art. The bands formed part of the wrought-iron choir screen in the church of Saint Béat in the Haute-Garonne region of France, near the Spanish border; an identical band was repurposed in an 18th-century grille surrounding the relics of Saint Béat. The choir screen had been crafted at an especially creative moment for ironworkers in the region—when Renaissance motifs were integrated with Gothic ones, and new technologies such as high-quality files and the cold rolling machine became available.</p> |
| 01.04.65 | <p>Three interlaced crescent moons adorn the center of this backplate for a door handle. The pull handle would have been attached in the small hole near the edge. The crescents—which refer to the Roman moon goddess, Diana—were the emblem of Diane de Poitiers (1500–1566), adviser and royal mistress to King Henry II of France (r. 1547–59). The designs enfolded by the moons are amalgams of the initials <em>HD</em>, abbreviating the joint signature, <em>HenriDiane</em>, that the pair used for official correspondence. Perhaps Diane used this door pull in the royal residence or another of her construction projects, all of which were built in the new Renaissance style. There is an identical object at the Musée le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen—a collection that inspired Albert Barnes to pursue antique wrought iron.</p> |
| 01.04.66 | <p>This jaunty male figure seems to have served as a support for a door knocker, once attached in the loop in the bottom of his torso. He faces the viewer with wide eyes, a slight smile, and an extended right arm. His curled fingers complement his swirled hair and violin-shaped torso. As a link between the outer world and the interior sphere of a residence, he would have symbolized both invitation and protection.</p> |
| 01.04.67 | <p>The workshops of the Embriachi family (active in Florence and Venice) mass-produced items carved in bone with wood and bone marquetry. In addition to altarpieces, they specialized in rectangular and polygonal caskets for holding documents or jewels, usually given as bridal gifts. The scenes of women and men interacting in a shallow cityscape have not been tied to a specific source, but excerpts from classical and medieval romances often appeared on bridal caskets, offering inspiration to the mind and heart alike.</p> |
| 01.04.45 | <p><em>Corpus Christi</em> means "Body of Christ" in Latin. The holes in Christ's hands and feet suggest that this object was once affixed to a cross. The signs of Christ's suffering are evident in his prominent ribs and the traces of red paint—indicating blood—on his right side and near his groin. Even so, his erect posture and open eyes demonstrate his ultimate triumph over death. The crucifix would have acted as a focus of prayer for a common layperson, whose devotion we witness through the evidence of rubbing on Christ's face and body.</p> |
| 01.05.49 | <p>This iron keyhole escutcheon most likely belonged to a coffer, or a small chest for valuables. Two prominent snowflake designs—cut out rather than wrought—bracket the keyhole, which is further offset by a small quatrefoil and two circles. The snowflakes' scheme of four dart-shaped lines and pointed cusping around the perimeter suggests that the escutcheon was crafted in France during the 16th century.</p> |
| 01.05.55 | <p>The holes in the feet of this dragon-shaped decoration suggest that it was originally mounted to a piece of furniture. The ironworker who created the dragon endowed it with sawlike teeth, wide eyes, a scaly body, and feathery, raised wings (made separately from the body, like the legs). Evidence of rubbing at the end of the spear-shaped tail suggests that this mythical creature may have acted as a talisman, perhaps to ward off bad fortune, after it was disconnected from the piece of furniture.</p> |
| 01.19.22 | <p>This spatula's blend of iron, copper, and brass has its stylistic origins in 19th-century Belgium. Tools made from this blend of metals were often given as wedding gifts. However, they were only meant for display, because brass and copper are impractical for hand tools. Both metals conduct heat well, which makes them difficult to handle around a fire. Iron has a lower heat conduction and is therefore safer and easier to use around an open flame.</p> |
| 01.19.07 | <p>This spatula's blend of iron, copper, and brass has its stylistic origins in 19th-century Belgium. Brass and copper were, and generally still are, more expensive than iron. Thus items made with these types of metals, like this one, were often given as wedding gifts and only intended for display.</p> |
| BF970 | <p>Here Cézanne depicts a view of Montigny-sur-Loing, a small medieval village situated on a river about 50 miles southeast of Paris. The building looming over the rooftops is a parish church built in the 12th century that still stands today. The striking diagonal in the foreground actually represents a tree rooted on a small piece of land. Cézanne flattens out the vista so that the river, the bank, and the distant buildings all appear on one continuous plane.</p> |
| BF1027 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene is known as a retablo. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. The Spanish Saint Raymond Nonnatus was born by Caesarean section after the death of his mother (Nonnatus means "not born" in Latin). As such, he became the patron saint of childbirth, midwives, children, and pregnant women. He is often depicted with a monstrance (a vessel to display the consecrated host or relics), which he holds in his right hand.</p> |
| BF948 | <p>Employing ebullient swirls and dashes of color but almost no descriptive detail, Renoir expresses all the vitality of the shifting clouds, foliage, and water of the natural landscape. Experimentation and relaxation motivated the production of his late landscapes—the majority of which were painted in the vicinity of Les Collettes. Although he was afflicted by debilitating arthritis in his last years, Renoir's condition did not prevent him from painting out of doors. He constructed a glass-enclosed studio on the estate to continue immortalizing the southern landscape he adored so immensely.</p> |
| BF960 | <p>The Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico was born in Greece and drew much of his inspiration from ancient Mediterranean sources. In this painting, de Chirico depicts Alexander the Great and his war horse Bucephalus standing on a beach, perhaps moments before departing to conquer nearby lands. Included in the artist's 1936 solo exhibition in New York City, this painting resonates with his other works that portray horses on the seashore.</p> |
| BF115 | <p>Between 1901 and 1904, during what is now called his Blue Period, Picasso pursued the themes of suffering and alienation, taking the sick, the blind, the imprisoned, and the indigent as his subjects—marginalized people with whom he greatly identified as he struggled in the early years of his career. Here we see a man with a sunken, emaciated chest and hollow cheeks seated before a spare meal. The setting lacks specificity, as if to emphasize this figure's outcast status.</p> |
| BF914 | <p>During his Nice period, Matisse created related groups of paintings based on identical motifs such as a window, rug, or in this instance, a red sofa. The model is likely Antoinette Arnoud or her sister. The luminosity in the upper part of the painting is attributed to the white ground, visible through thin paint layers, while more opaque reds impart weight to the canvas's lower section. The vibrant stripes on the model's robe accentuate the Chinoiserie vase and flowers on the dresser as well as the meandering floral pattern on the expansive carpet.</p> |
| BF1029 | <p>The archangel Raphael appears in this santo (image of a holy figure) with his traditional attributes, a pilgrim's staff and a fish, which refer to his role as a guide and healer in the biblical Book of Tobit. Behind him is a celestial rainbow. Ortega was an itinerant artist in northern New Mexico who made traditional santos for churches, convents, and homes at a time when the Catholic Church was promoting mass-produced plaster statues for devotion instead of paintings. The drawn curtains framing Raphael imply that this santo was part of a larger altar retable.</p> |
| BF565 | <p>A muse, tastemaker, and patron of the arts in turn-of-the-century Paris, Misia was a trained concert pianist from an artistic family of Polish-Belgian descent in Russia. Renoir portrays this famed beauty and salon hostess with a lush sensuality—her plunging neckline, accentuated with blossoms, shows off the pearlescent skin of her bust; the rounded cushion or sofa arm that she leans on echoes her soft curves; and a dog, strategically positioned, sits contentedly in her lap.</p> |
| BF1168 | <p>Red, yellow, and pink roses tumble across this horizontal composition. Some are buds; others blossom exuberantly. The paint, likewise, alternates between impasto brushstrokes and a thin wash exposing the canvas. According to Renoir, "Painting flowers rests my brain. When I paint flowers, I place colors and experiment with values boldly."</p> |
| BF571 | <p>The child here is probably Renoir's youngest son, Claude, at about age four, strolling with his nursemaid, Renée Jolivet. He painted this portrait in Essoyes, a small village that was the hometown of Renoir's wife, Aline, and where the Renoir family often spent summers. The large canvas straddles the categories of genre and portraiture. When this painting was exhibited in Paris in 1906, one critic said it confirmed Renoir's evolution from an impressionist to an heir of the great European painting tradition.</p> |
| BF478 | <p>Although Renoir produced this sunlit scene during the last decade of his life, the composition echoes the depictions of leisure he painted during the height of his impressionist period. The seated figure is Amélie Dieterle, a celebrated actress, chanteuse, and mistress of the founder of the Gallimard publishing house, Paul Gallimard. The figure in red is Gabrielle Renard, the nursemaid for the Renoir family, whom the artist painted frequently. Despite the physical proximity of the two women, there is no sign of deeper interaction—perhaps to emphasize the difference in their social status.</p> |
| BF1023 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Saint John of Nepomuk is shown here with three of his traditional attributes: a martyr's palm branch, a cross, and a clerical hat known as a biretta.</p> |
| BF285 | <p>The model here is Jeanne Hébuterne, Amedeo Modigliani's lover during the last three years of his life. Hébuterne was an art student when she and Modigliani began their relationship in 1917. The two lived together in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris, and she frequently posed for him. Though their relationship was often stormy, Modigliani presents his lover as the embodiment of calmness and sensuality, drawing inspiration from ancient Greek statuary and African tribal sculpture.</p> |
| BF2538 | <p>Here Morgan arranged a series of domed buildings and tiered passageways in a geometric grid and rendered them in shades of green and blue. The work's title suggests that the picture may represent the hilly coastal town of Amalfi on the southern end of the Bay of Naples, in Italy. Morgan drew from the techniques of analytic cubism established by Picasso and Braque, a quasi-abstract mode of depiction that asks viewers to bring the scene into focus through their own observations and sensations.</p> |
| BF371 | <p>In this fantastic harem, groups of men strike drums and tambourines while women dance to the music. Another man lounges in the foreground, smoking a hookah. The landscape is generic—especially compared to Guiraud's intricately detailed cityscape of Bordeaux, also on this wall—but the title and the French flags locate the scene somewhere in colonial Africa. The artist's unscientific yet powerful style suited the colonialist imagery of the "exoticism" of non-Western locales.</p> |
| BF937 | <p>Idealized visions of peasants at rest were very popular in the exhibitions of the Paris Salon toward the end of the 19th century. But while naturalist artists such as Jules Breton and Léon Lhermitte addressed the correlation between toil and weary rest, here Renoir focuses on the idylls of rural life and on the painting's formal qualities. Richly colored, with a play of high-key warm and cool hues, the canvas is thickly worked and unified by long sequences of ribbon-like brushstrokes that suggest the forms of the figures and the lay of the ground.</p> |
| BF339 | <p>Versed in the European modernist styles that he encountered during trips to Europe, Charles Demuth practiced a distinctive style of precisionism that explored American cityscapes such as New York, Gloucester and Provincetown in Massachusetts, and his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Here, Demuth took a high vantage point, looking across pitched black roofs to the chimneys, blocky warehouses, and factories beyond. The enigmatic title is characteristic for this period of Demuth's work.</p> |
| BF199 | <p>Matisse painted this work in Nice, a city in the South of France that he visited frequently in the 1920s. The canvas is one of several executed at this time of a female nude reclining in front of a patterned folding screen. All are studies in color and composition: the screen serves to flatten and structure the composition, as the vertical panels segment the model's body. The figure cuts a dynamic diagonal across the picture plane, which seems to tilt up and toward the viewer. The vibrant palette of yellow and pink heightens the sensuality of the model's pose.</p> |
| BF268 | <p>Contrasting treatment of paint distinguishes this portrait of an unknown model. Modigliani probably painted the work using a very fine brush, and the subject's finely drawn features, the subtle pink highlights in the face, and the energetic treatment of the background are all characteristic of the artist's work. Some people who posed for Modigliani recalled that he could be very messy, working intensely, untroubled by the paint he splashed in the process.</p> |
| BF2537 | <p>The title of this painting references a famous Renaissance-era bridge in Florence, Italy. In the use of softly colored geometric shapes Morgan drew from the methods of analytic cubism established by Picasso and Braque. Also discernable in this quasi-abstraction are polychromatic merchants' stalls and rectangular windows, which help to bring the monument into focus.</p> |
| BF343 | <p>Demuth painted <em>Masts</em> in the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he spent the summer of 1919. Demuth worked in a cubist-inspired style that came to be called precisionism. Here, he presents geometric shapes that could be read as an erect mast, its radiating sails, and the roof of a warehouse. Yet Demuth was not overly concerned with the specificity of the content or the location depicted; he exhibited this painting in 1920 with the vague title <em>Chimnies, Ventilators, or Whatever</em>.</p> |
| BF374 | <p>This painting depicts the city of Bordeaux in southwestern France. The little-known artist Guiraud represents the city's major architectural monuments, including its cathedral, large public plazas, and medieval bell towers. Nearly half of the canvas is given over to a remarkable representation of the Garonne River, crossed by bridges and filled with military boats that bear the French and Italian flags.</p> |
| BF1007 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Here Saint Anthony of Padua holds the Christ Child and a white lily stalk, two attributes of the Franciscan saint.</p> |
| BF1036 | <p>In this small watercolor of Rouen, France, we see the city's towering Gothic cathedral, a multicolored tree, and the river Seine busy with boats. Signac's painting technique separates colors according to rules of optical contrast. This technique was meant to echo the structures of material reality and of Gothic engineering. The Gothic element further expressed the artist's sociopolitical ideals: he and his peers believed that Gothic cities had been near-communist utopias of moral and social harmony and hoped that their paintings would promote the same values.</p> |
| BF276 | <p>Born in Bulgaria, Pascin spent most of his life in Paris. He is primarily known for his sensual nudes and shimmering backgrounds. While Pascin often painted pairs of women, this work is unusual in its inclusion of a young boy. The relationship between the two figures is hard to understand: the boy's body is turned toward the woman, yet his face looks down and away, implying a psychological distance between them.</p> |
| BF713 | <p>Signac shows a view of Geneva from its lake, spotlighting the lofty cathedral spires and offsetting violet walls of buildings and mountains against the pale yellow sky. Signac's painting technique separates colors according to rules of optical contrast. This technique was meant to echo the structures of material reality and of Gothic engineering. The Gothic element further expresses the artist's sociopolitical ideals: he and his peers believed that Gothic cities had been near-communist utopias of moral and social harmony and hoped that their paintings would inspire viewers to the same values.</p> |
| BF436 | <p>In this iridescent canvas, two women enjoy a seaside idyll. Cross and his fellow neoimpressionists sought to "purify" the techniques and effects of impressionism through a systematic approach to form and color, informed by cutting-edge optical science. These new aesthetic values reflected a philosophical vision of a superior, self-willed humanity emerging from the ashes of the old order. Cross wrote, "I want to paint happiness, happy beings who will have become mankind in several centuries when pure anarchy will be realized."</p> |
| 01.18.13 | <p>This bird displays the bright colors, naturalism, and skilled carving commonly found in Pennsylvania German decorative arts. A popular design motif, birds appear frequently in the illustrated documents, textiles, and furniture of that culture. Although the vibrant bird appears fanciful, it may represent a Carolina Parakeet. These now-extinct birds were once common in Pennsylvania and celebrated for their brilliant red, green and yellow plumage.</p> |
| 01.18.08 | <p>The crown was a popular motif in the work of Pennsylvania German fraktur artists. Although the motif may have carried a symbolic meaning, it's just as likely that artists favored it simply for its decorative potential, similar to the ubiquitous tulip. Here, a crown anchors the design on the chest's front. This chest could be the work of the fraktur artist Daniel Otto, based on its stylistic similarity to his other decorations.</p> |
| 01.18.06a | <p>The mortar and pestle are among the oldest tools created by humans and have been found in nearly every corner of the world. Although more research is needed to determine the origins of this wooden example, the size suggests that they were used to grind and mix large amounts of organic or inorganic material. Given that mortars and pestles are most commonly associated with the production of medications, it is certainly possible that Dr. Barnes prized its pharmaceutical aspect.</p> |
| 01.18.06b | <p>The mortar and pestle are among the oldest tools created by humans and have been found in nearly every corner of the world. Although more research is needed to determine the origins of this wooden example, the size suggests that they were used to grind and mix large amounts of organic or inorganic material. Given that mortars and pestles are most commonly associated with the production of medications, it is certainly possible that Dr. Barnes prized its pharmaceutical aspect.</p> |
| BF556 | <p>A bouquet of flowers in a glass vase sits atop a table next to peaches and bunches of grapes, some of which are so ripe that they burst. The naturalistic style of the painting, signed by Philippe Parpette, veils the artificiality of the arrangement: for example, daffodils and forget-me-nots bloom early in the spring, while grapes are harvested in the late summer and early fall.</p> |
| BF555 | <p>A bouquet of colorful flowers rests on a stone counter between apricots and a bunch of green grapes. The naturalistic style of painting veils the artificiality of the arrangement: for example, anemones bloom in the spring, while grapes are harvested in the late summer or early fall. Eighteenth-century still life painters reveled in art's potential for capturing the beauty and scientific structures of botanical specimens.</p> |
| BF362 | <p>This Post-Byzantine icon of Christ's Nativity was probably painted on Crete, an island that had been part of the Byzantine Empire and became a center of icon painting after its fall. The Christ Child rests in a manger—protected by an ox and a donkey, and admired by the Virgin Mary and a flock of angels. To the left, the three Magi approach with gifts; in the foreground, Joseph confronts a man in a dark fur coat who tries (and fails) to sow seeds of doubt regarding Christ's miraculous birth. At the top of the panel, more angels lean over clouds and display banners that announce, "Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace to men" (Luke 2:14).</p> |
| BF622 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Here the archangel Saint Michael battles evil with a sword while he weighs the souls of the recently departed on a balance.</p> |
| 01.18.115 | <p>The embroidered letters on this canvas sampler are almost as bright as they were on the day they were first stitched. The thread is made from wool, which absorbs and retains the color from dyes better and longer than most other fibers. The 1850s to early 1900s also witnessed the invention of new types of synthetic dyes that were more vibrant and longer-lasting than natural dyes. Although we do not know what type of dye was used to make these threads, their cheerful color is still pleasant today.</p> |
| 01.18.104 | <p>Two riders gallop and leap over a fence with their horses on this playful sampler. The design is done with a cross-stitch technique, which is one of the first stitches most embroiders learn. It is one of the simplest patterns, only requiring the sewer to make an "X" with their needle, but also the most useful when creating images in thread. This complex scene required the maker to think through and plan out the whole picture before ever putting the needle to canvas.</p> |
| 01.18.103ab | <p>Pewter and brass were affordable alternatives to silver and effective materials for conducting heat. The wooden thumbpiece and feet protected hands and surfaces from the vessel's warm body. The urn's spigot allowed the user to serve large quantities of hot beverages such as coffee. Most coffee urns were included in a larger drinkware service, along with cups and saucers, tongs, and bowls. The urn is displayed here next to other drinking vessels rather than as part of a larger service.</p> |
| 01.18.114ab | <p>Pewter and brass were affordable alternatives to silver and effective materials for conducting heat. The wooden thumbpiece and feet protected hands and surfaces from the vessel's warm body. The urn's spigot allowed the user to serve large quantities of hot beverages such as coffee. Most coffee urns were included in a larger drinkware service, along with cups and saucers, tongs, and bowls. The urn is displayed here next to other drinking vessels rather than as part of a larger service.</p> |
| BF1081 | <p>The aged, Taoist sage in the foreground has become so attuned to nature as to be intimate with a fierce tiger, whom he strokes. A young man—probably a disciple—approaches with a bowl of symbolic fruits: a persimmon (fecundity), a <em>ling-chih</em> mushroom (longevity), and the citrus <em>fo-shou</em> (good fortune). Likewise, the evergreen pine tree connotes endurance, and the bamboo flexibility. The stylized trees, clouds, and waterfall signal that this is a transcendent, rather than a "natural," landscape.</p> |
| BF217 | <p>More than any painter of his generation, Renoir is often criticized for his presentation of women as purely corporeal creatures devoid of psychological dimension. Here, the woman's ample body fills the canvas and seems to exist purely for the visual pleasure of the viewer. She is in perfect harmony with nature; note how her body rhymes with the curves of the mountains in the background.</p> |
| BF595 | <p>The inscription in the upper left corner of this portrait reads "<em>au peintre Lucas</em>" (to the painter Lucas). Renoir's friend and fellow artist Félix Hippolyte-Lucas was trained in the French academic tradition and was best known for his vibrant portraits and figure paintings of women. He also executed murals for the Casino de Monte-Carlo and for the Paris Stock Exchange. In 1919, the year after this portrait was completed and a few months before Renoir's death, Lucas reciprocated by painting Renoir.</p> |
| BF936 | <p>This Pennsylvania German watercolor, in a style known as <em>fraktur</em>, was made in 1784 to be the cover of a writing manual for young students. Translated, the inscription enclosed within the heart reads, "This little book of writing models belongs to Elisabetha Lädtermann, pupil of writing in the Deep Run School, written out for her the 16th of December, Anno Domini 1784."</p> |
| BF1090 | <p>Jean Hugo wrote to his wife one December, "Each winter, the unicorns come out of the woods like wild boars and come to haunt me in my paintings." Such would seem to be the premise of <em>The Flight</em>, in which a silver unicorn, a black bull, and a mottled horse with a human face charge through a barren, moonlit landscape while harpies fly above. The austere setting recalls late medieval Italian painting, as does Hugo's use of egg tempera. These qualities would have appealed to Dr. Barnes, who appreciated modern artists' adaptations of past traditions to capture their own experiences.</p> |
| BF541 | <p>A woman and dog repose on a sunny day among lush vegetation, with a farmhouse in the background. Set on the Renoir family property in Cagnes, Les Collettes, this landscape was likely painted in the studio rather than <em>en plein air</em>. The farmhouse at Les Collettes was a three-story building, rather larger than the structure in the painting. Furthermore, the difference in scale between the house and the woman indicates that this work is an evocative expression of Renoir's vision of Cagnes as a blissful place of harmony with nature.</p> |
| BF1034 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. Here Saint Acacius is shown being crucified in a crown of thorns, flanked by two solders bearing lances.</p> |
| BF841 | <p>God the Father (wearing a papal tiara) and Jesus (holding the orb of the world) crown the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven. Above her, the dove of the Holy Spirit sparkles with divine light. Their massive throne—set in the gardens of Paradise—is covered with a sumptuous brocade cloth-of-honor and a scarlet canopy, whose curtains are drawn back by adoring angels. According to Roman Catholic tradition, Mary's Coronation honors her extraordinary contribution to human salvation.</p> |
| BF448 | <p>This striking portrait represents Amelie Matisse, the artist's wife, who stares down the viewer with a penetrating gaze. Amelie modeled frequently for her husband, posing in some of the great revolutionary canvases of the early 20th century. When Matisse first exhibited this picture in 1907, it was not received very well by critics. Matisse deliberately challenges the conventions of portraiture by distorting his subject's body and focusing instead on color and pattern.</p> |
| 01.15.10 | <p>Redware served a utilitarian, often domestic, purpose. Common forms include plates, jugs, creamers, and pots like this one. Potters often added decoration to liven the plain ceramic body. Because of its shiny lead-glaze surface, the otherwise porous redware was waterproof—perfect for storing liquids and food. Dr. Barnes seemed to enjoy American redware given its frequent appearance in the ensembles. Creators of North State Pottery were known for developing creative uses of new glazes and techniques.</p> |
| 01.15.09 | <p>Used for storing water, this jar is a typical example of the Santa Ana Pueblo style, with its distinctive red clay and slip (a mixture of clay, water, and other materials), polished surface, and geometric shapes in white with black outlines. The neck features repeating arches, while the body has four panels of stepped pyramidal designs with interior arches. This type of polychrome pottery was widely made by the Tamaya or Santa Ana Pueblo peoples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but few examples of these ceramics survive today.</p> |
| BF310 | <p>The pleats on <em>Fan—Landscape with Horse and Bridge</em> signal that it was part of a functional folding fan, attached to wooden or ivory supports. An inscription by the painter (at the top) notes that he composed the landscape in the Spring Mountain Wood Cottage for a person named Hayashi. Could Hayashi, or the artist, be one of the figures crossing the bridge, walking among the gnarled pines, or standing at the windows and doors of the cottages tucked between the mountains? For Japanese spectators, the scene may have evoked the aesthetic experiences of <em>yugen</em> (the sense of the world's unfathomability) or <em>mono no aware</em> (the pathos of transience).</p> |
| BF568 | <p>The dramatic lighting and atmospheric quality of this work recall famed landscapes by the 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain. This example dates to the 18th or 19th century and borrows numerous architectural, human, and maritime features from Claude's paintings of ancient Mediterranean seaports, many of which are on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.</p> |
| BF1190 | <p>Angelo Pinto had a long relationship with the Barnes, first as a student and later as a member of the faculty. In this work, Pinto uses the reverse painting on glass technique to depict the Biblical story of David and Goliath. According to the narrative, the young shepherd David defeats the giant Goliath in a single battle, after which he became famous and ascended to be king of Israel. Pinto uses scale to heighten the drama of the scene, with David standing in the background looking up at the monumental form of Goliath.</p> |
| BF148 | <p>While the bare parts of the canvas along the bottom and left edge make this picture appear unfinished, it is possible that Cézanne deliberately left these areas unpainted and considered this a complete work. If the blank sections are jarring, so is the still life's off-center presentation, as the table seems to slide toward the left. The floral pitcher was from the kitchen of Cézanne's father's country estate, the Jas de Bouffan, where this was painted. The pitcher appears in another still life in the collection as well (BF910).</p> |
| BF156 | <p>Luscious swirls of blushing pink and peach brushstrokes capture the fullness of the blooms in this informal still-life painting. This commercially appealing genre provided Renoir with a steady source of income. Indeed, the majority of the still lifes he produced between the 1860s and 1880s were intended for the art market, where they found buyers more readily than did his landscapes and figure paintings. Beyond financial profit, Renoir approached still lifes as technical exercises to improve speed of handling, explore color combinations, and "research into flesh tones for a nude."</p> |
| A97 | <p>An oinochoe is a type of ancient vessel used to pour wine (<em>oinochoe</em> means "wine-pourer" in ancient Greek). Ancient Greek wine was very strong, so it was mixed with water in a large vessel (called a krater). Servers would then dip an oinochoe into the krater before pouring the wine-water mixture into individual cups. The elaborate decoration of this vessel, which covers the entire surface and includes panels with floral motifs and a kneeling deer with a bird on its back, may have provided fodder for appreciation and conversation during drinking parties.</p> |
| BF323 | <p>American Mary Cassatt spent the majority of her adult life in Paris, where she found more opportunity and freedom as a woman artist than was possible in America. The mother-and-child pairing was one of Cassatt's favorite themes, and she tackled it in a variety of media, including oil painting, printmaking, and watercolor.</p> |
| A87 | <p>This bell-shaped vessel, known as a krater, was used in the ancient world for mixing wine and was probably made in Boeotia, a region of central Greece. Decorating the side of this krater is an image of a young man with long, wavy hair who wears a laurel-wreath crown and stands next to a horse. A similar motif is depicted on the other side of the object. Perhaps these two horsemen are Castor and Pollux, also known as the Dioscuri, the famous twins of ancient Greek mythology.</p> |
| A22 | <p>Because silver jewelry was not an ancient art form governed by traditional designs, Navajo silversmiths had the opportunity to experiment. Twelve four-petal squash blossoms festoon this silver necklace. Another smooth, three-petal squash blossom tops its crescent-shaped <em>názhah</em> (central pendant). The <em>názhah</em> terminates in a pair of hands, complete with knuckles. The hands replaced earlier stone settings, to satisfy evolving tastes.</p> |
| A119 | <p>The slender proportions and decorative elements of this ceramic vessel, known as an amphora, are characteristic of similar objects made in Apulia, an ancient Greek colony located in southern Italy. Two figures, painted in the red-figure style, make offerings to a funerary monument. On the left, the male figure steps onto the monument's platform as he makes an offering of oil or wine, while the female reaches up to tie a ribbon around the tall grave marker. This example has an open bottom, which would have allowed for libations of oil and wine poured into the top of the amphora to soak into the ground below.</p> |
| A418 | <p>This handmade terra-cotta horse with a legless rider is similar in form to examples found at Tanagra, a town north of Athens. However, the attachment of the figure's arms to the horse's neck and the depiction of the animal's nose and eyes depart from similar objects securely dated to the sixth century BCE. More research is needed to determine the origins of this object.</p> |
| A164 | <p>In Buddhism, bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who help others to achieve awakening. This sandstone head belonged to a bodhisattva statue from the cave temples of Tianlongshan, China. Tianlongshan means "Heavenly Dragon Mountain" and consists of 21 cave temples; a Chinese inscription on the back of this head reads, "Cave 17, north side of the east wall, right attendant [to a Buddha]." The bodhisattva's closed eyes and gentle smile convey compassion.</p> |
| A118 | <p>This vessel was known in the ancient Greek world as an askos. Often created in the form of animals, these objects were used to hold and pour liquids. This example is in the form of a fantastical creature. The snout-shaped spout suggests that the object could have been used as a baby's bottle. Further research is needed to determine the precise origins of this charming object.</p> |
| A159 | <p>Referred to as a pelike in the ancient Greek world, large terra-cotta vessels like this were used for holding various liquids. On the side facing out of the case is a battle scene between a nude Greek male figure and a fully covered Amazon woman. The dynamic composition and flowing drapery of the female warrior, along with the intensity of the horse's facial expression, are characteristic of the so-called "Kerch Style." This style was named after the Crimean city of Kerch (site of the ancient Greek settlement Panticapaeum), where large numbers of these late red-figure vases were discovered.</p> |
| A142 | <p>This sandstone head represents an enlightened being from Buddhism called a bodhisattva. In visual representation bodhisattvas are distinguished from buddhas by their princely appearance and elaborately styled hair. The head was originally part of a larger figure in the Buddhist cave temples at Tianlongshan, in northern China, which were looted in the early 20th century after the fall of the Qing dynasty.</p> |
| A121 | <p>The decoration of this storage vessel, known as an amphora, includes a band of motifs depicting starbursts, horses, and simplified figures in addition to the representation of mythical creatures called centaurs on the neck. Despites its ancient appearance, this example is a modern fabrication meant to look like an object from the Geometric Period of Greek antiquity (c. eighth century BCE). The combination of starbursts with centaurs does not appear in any known examples of objects from this period.</p> |
| A122 | <p>On the neck of this storage jar, known as an amphora, a grazing horse arches its neck over a birdlike creature. The linear and geometric motifs covering the rest of the object are characteristic of the Geometric Period (8th century BCE), one of the earliest eras of ancient Greek art. Despite its antique style, however, we cannot rule out the possibility that this vessel is a cunning modern forgery. More research will help to solve what is, at present, something of a mystery.</p> |
| A114 | <p>The whirling-log design seen on this bracelet represents an eddy of water. According to the Diné Bahane' (creation story), the Diné (Navajo) migrated from the flooded Yellow world to this world, carried by the energy of the eddy. Early traders encouraged the use of the symbol to make jewelry look more authentically "Indian." During World War II, many Southwest tribes stopped using the symbol, which was often mistaken for a swastika. Today, Diné artists are reclaiming the symbol in their work.</p> |
| A129 | <p>Known as an alabastron in the ancient Greek world, this type of vessel was often used to hold perfumed oil. The shape and limited color palette of black, red, and white are typical of ceramics made in the Greek port city of Corinth. The ceramic's form is ancient; the decorative pattern, however, seems to have been applied at a later date, evidenced by the underlying incised lines that encircle the object. These incisions were used by ancient artists to organize the decorative compositions of vessels like this.</p> |
| A170 | <p>The hallmark <em>názhah</em> (crescent) pendant of squash-blossom necklaces was adapted from bridals that Navajo silversmiths observed on Spanish, Mexican, and Plains tribes' horses. The Navajo originally learned to work metal from Mexican blacksmiths in the mid-19th century. As a relatively new art form, silver jewelry became a place of artistic experimentation for Navajo artisans, as evidenced by the trefoil designs on this <em>názhah</em> as well as the outer distal ends turning away from the pendant's center.</p> |
| A113 | <p>Wearing a jeweled crown and a stern expression, this sandstone head belonged to a guardian figure from the Buddhist holy site of Tianlongshan, China. Tianlongshan means "Heavenly Dragon Mountain" and consists of 21 cave temples; the guardian was carved directly from the rock wall of Cave 10. He protected a statue of a Buddha seated in a niche, surrounded by bodhisattvas, heavenly musicians, and other attendants.</p> |
| A186 | <p><em>Ketohs</em> originated as thick bands of leather to protect archers from the stings of their bow strings. By the late 19th century, these wrist cuffs often featured metal plates with stamped and hammered designs and turquoise stones. This substantial <em>ketoh</em> includes a fleur-de-lis and scrolling heart design accented with detailed stamping and three small, flat-cut turquoise stones.</p> |
| A112 | <p>Used for holding oil or perfume, this small vessel is known as an aryballos. Animals such as lions, ducks, goats, and panthers stride around the object in two horizontal bands of decoration. This decorative scheme is characteristic of ceramics made in the city of Corinth during the sixth century BCE and were inspired by motifs from empires such as the Hittites of the eastern Mediterranean and the Assyrians of Mesopotamia.</p> |
| A149 | <p>This terracotta object is a modern fabrication of a stamnos, a type of vessel used in the ancient Mediterranean for storage. The red-figure painting mimics the decorative patterns and motifs found on examples from the Etruscan civilization, which once flourished in the Tuscan region of present-day Italy.</p> |
| A91 | <p><em>Ketohs</em> originated as thick bands of leather to protect archers from the snap of their bow strings. By the late 19th century, these wrist cuffs often featured metal plates with stamped and hammered designs and turquoise stones. This <em>ketoh</em>, comprised of opposed scrolling heart designs and nine domed-top turquoise stones, would have originally been affixed to a leather wrist guard with copper loops.</p> |
| A104ab | <p>This small round ceramic jar was known in the ancient Greek world as a pyxis. It was made sometime in the early sixth century BCE using a potter's wheel and decorated in a style that connects it to the Greek city of Corinth. The red-and-black animals that march around the vessel on a cream-colored ground were inspired by motifs from empires such as the Hittites of the eastern Mediterranean and the Assyrians of Mesopotamia.</p> |
| A103 | <p>Double-head vessels were popular in fifth century BCE Greece and its surrounding areas. They are called janiform vases, named after the Greek god Janus, who had two faces. Many vases of this type were produced in Athens, but this example likely came from a Greek colony in southern Italy.</p> |
| A188 | <p>Objects like this terracotta amphora were used throughout the ancient Mediterranean as storage vessels. The decoration consists of linear elements and simplified animals that include four-legged creatures and birds. The geometric quality of the design recalls vessels made in Greece during the eighty century BCE; however, it is possible that our example is a modern fabrication intended to look ancient.</p> |
| A50 | <p>An askos is an ancient vessel, sometimes in the form of an animal, made to hold oil. They were often heavily decorated with geometric patterns and figures, though much of the decoration on this example, such as the lounging female nude on the body of the bird, was repainted in the late 19th or early 20th century.</p> |
| BF742 | <p><em>Flowers with Yellow Rose</em> is signed "Mélanie Marc, 1842." An open yellow rose forms the center of a floral arrangement, amid delicate sprigs of blue flax and spears (racemes) of purple-and-pink sainfoin. Marc's bouquet-style composition explores the decorative potential of botanical illustration, and the depiction of flowers at multiple angles and life stages fulfills its scientific purpose. There is another painting by Marc at the Barnes: <em>Field Flowers</em> (1842) in Room 20.</p> |
| A422 | <p>This handmade terra-cotta horse is similar in form to examples found at Tanagra, a town north of Athens. However, the careful attention paid to the horse's nose, eyes, and bridle depart from similar objects securely dated to the sixth century BCE. More research is needed to determine the origins of this figure.</p> |
| A94 | <p>Black-figure vases, such as this amphora, were characterized by detailed craftsmanship and complex narrative scenes. The four figures represented here—two bearded men on either side of a pair of soldiers holding weapons and armor—tell a story about the presence of war in daily life. The two central men are leaving for battle, and the older men, who likely represent family members, are bidding them farewell. Conflict was ever-present in the ancient world, and these scenes would have had special resonance with those who used this amphora.</p> |
| BF980 | <p>Matisse painted <em>Figure with Bouquet</em> in the summer of 1939 while working with the Hungarian model Wilma Javor. Models were essential to the development of Matisse's pictures, as he wrote that same summer, "My models, human figures, are never just 'extras' in an interior. They are the principal theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model." The figure's absorption in her book parallels the artist's absorption in the creation of the work. Matisse left traces of earlier drafts of the composition visible: the ghost of the figure's right foot and calf indicates a prior position closer to the chest, and the vestigial outline of the chest reveals its previously diagonal orientation.</p> |
| BF616 | <p>Barton Church gave <em>Girl in a Chair</em> as a gift to Dr. Barnes in June 1951, when he had completed his studies at the Barnes Foundation; it is the last painting that Dr. Barnes acquired. Meanwhile Church went on to become a beloved instructor at the Barnes Foundation for over 60 years. Here a stylized figure in a lime-green outfit perches in a lavender chair against an immersive tangerine background. It is an appropriate celebration of the collection, bringing together elements from Dogon sculpture, the paintings of de Chirico and Afro, and functional objects—note the resemblance of the chair in the painting to the Windsor armchair below.</p> |
| A3 | <p>Albert Barnes assembled an impressive collection of Native American pottery, textiles, and jewelry, including 23 squash blossom necklaces. Some of these items were apparently selected and worn by his wife, Laura Barnes. The Navajo people first started producing squash blossom necklaces during the mid-19th century, when silversmithing technologies were brought to the Southwest. The necklaces are named for the flaring petals along the sides.</p> |
| BF2542 | <p>Francis McCarthy was a Philadelphia-based painter, watercolorist, and ceramicist, who took classes at the Barnes Foundation and received support from Albert Barnes to study fine art abroad in France. This watercolor of a woman—nude from the waist up and standing out of doors—is evocative of Paul Gauguin's <em>Haere Pape</em>, in Room 6, which McCarthy would have had access to while studying at the Foundation. Dr. Barnes bought this watercolor at the same time as McCarthy's stylistically similar <em>Girl Seated in Room,</em> which hangs nearby.</p> |
| A59 | <p>The Geometric Period (ca. 900–700 BCE) was a time of renewed artistic production in ancient Greece, with simple shape-based designs that eventually advanced to depictions of figures. This amphora, with its stark decoration of stripes, zigzags, and a horse with a bird on its back, was made at a pivotal moment in Greek Iron Age art, when artists began experimenting with combining geometric forms with images from the natural world.</p> |
| BF761 | <p>An anonymous artist has gathered white daisies, purple primrose, a pale pink rose, and blue love-in-a-mist into a small bouquet. Note the cool silvery tones (especially in the rose petals) and the lacy bracts around the love-in-a-mist blossoms. At the Barnes, <em>Flowers with Daisies</em> is displayed by another botanical watercolor, <em>Field Flowers</em> (1842) by Mélanie Marc. The pair draws attention to the flowers in a prominent painting below them, Matisse's <em>Figure with Bouquet</em> (1939).</p> |
| A153 | <p>The plumed helmet, chin strap, and strong profile of this relief evoke the architectural decoration found on early second century CE Roman monuments, such as the Column of Trajan. The scale, however, is unusually large for a Roman relief, and the facial features recall the style of early 20th century Art Deco sculpture. It is most likely, therefore, that the relief is a modern production created in imitation of ancient Roman art.</p> |
| BF1074 | <p>This illustration was inspired by Émile Zola's 1880 novel, <em>Nana</em>. Here Nana is seen performing as Venus at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. Demuth places the viewer in the perspective of Zola's character Count Muffat, who admires Nana through a peephole from backstage. The contours of Nana's body are outlined by a quivering graphite line that recalls the graphic work of Auguste Rodin. Demuth's washes in yellow watercolor evoke the blinding intensity and dramatic illumination of the stage's electric footlights.</p> |
| BF619 | <p>Francis McCarthy was a student and teacher at the Friends Neighborhood Guild, a North Philadelphia Quaker organization that held regular exhibitions of local artists. Albert Barnes often purchased works from these exhibitions, including this watercolor of a rural landscape, possibly sketched near Cuautla, Jalisco, a small town in western Mexico. While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, McCarthy adopted what he called the "wet paper technique," which consisted of adding pigment to already wet paper to create shapes with soft edges, allowing colors to bleed into each other. These soft edges can be seen here in the blurred trees and hill.</p> |
| A107 | <p>This block with sunk relief comes from the tomb of Khay, a mayor of Thebes (modern Luxor) and vizier (chief advisor) to the pharaoh. Seven columns of hieroglyphic text describe Khay making incense and giving it to the dead but deified king Amenhotep I, whose name can be seen within the cartouche on the far right. At the bottom of the block, Khay's head, shoulders, and upraised hands are visible, and he faces an incense burner with cones of incense on the far right. Traces of original paint can be seen in the hieroglyphs, the figure of Khay, and the incense.</p> |
| A161 | <p>This inscribed block belonged to a door lintel or false door from an Egyptian tomb. Two rectangular sections of hieroglyphic inscriptions in raised relief, with traces of red paint, name the tomb owner as a man called Iti. The upper inscription records a list of offerings that the god Anubis will give to him in the afterlife. The lower inscription lists Iti's official titles. The placing of the inscription on the doorway or a false door was done with the hope that visitors to the tomb would read aloud his name.</p> |
| BF2079 | <p>Several gaily dressed women recline on rocks next to the ocean as waves crash around them. Prendergast, whose influences ranged from the crowded spectacles of medieval mosaics to the emergent art of his day, was considered a pioneer of American modernism. In <em>Rocks, Waves, and Figures</em>, he experimented with the bold color palette of Édouard Manet as well as the dramatic silhouettes and vigorous impasto—seen especially in the white, frothing waves—of Winslow Homer.</p> |
| BF2529 | <p>In this luminous watercolor, two red, tulip-like flowers blossom within a field of multicolored, stippled polygonal shapes separated by calligraphic black lines. Created near the end of Klee's tenure at the Bauhaus, the famous German design school that had sought to unite architecture, fine arts, and crafts, <em>Two Red Flowers</em> can be interpreted as a totalizing work of art. Klee drew upon Gestalt psychology to construct the scene out of a series of expanding and contracting surfaces.</p> |
| BF2531 | <p>Klee's handwritten German title, <em>Der letzte Landsknecht</em>, appears at the bottom-right of this watercolor. The <em>Landsknechte</em> were formidable mercenary soldiers who served in the army of the Holy Roman Empire (a realm encompassing the modern nation of Germany and other areas of central and western Europe) from the late 1400s into the 1600s. Klee has painted the three-quarters bust of this soldier in a patchwork of somber crosshatched colors. His large, intense eyes are offset by thick eyebrows; he extends one hand to his viewers. Perhaps he embodies fragments of German cultural memory at the onset of a horrifying episode of the nation's history.</p> |
| BF1006 | <p>The rainbow-colored circles, polygons, and conical shapes of this small watercolor might remind viewers of searchlights or shooting stars. Painted in 1914, the image attests to Klee's discovery of color during a light-soaked trip to Tunisia during that year and his subsequent pursuit of the "romanticism of abstraction." He wrote that art should "raise itself to visions of multiple harmonies, a harmony of colors separating and coming together again in the same action. This synchronic action is the one, true subject of painting."</p> |
| BF2530 | <p>A group of what appears to be four human figures and two animals are shown in motion. Their bodies are formed of iridescent, intersecting shapes resembling stained glass—complementing two other watercolors that Klee painted in 1932, <em>The Last Mercenary</em> and <em>Two Red Flowers</em>, displayed just below in Room 17. The now-obsolete term <em>Orient</em> of this picture's title may refer to the region of North Africa, particularly Egypt, where Klee traveled frequently. He credited seeing the dazzling Mediterranean sun playing on the cityscape of Kairouan, Tunisia, for helping him understand how to use color in painting.</p> |
| BF1005 | <p><em>Sicilian Landscape</em> dates to Klee's first visit to the Mediterranean island in 1924. Pastel blocks of color—rooted in Paul Cézanne's fractured approach to landscape—suggest the sea, sky, hills, houses, and perhaps a classical temple near the center. Klee painted this image while employed at the Bauhaus, where he was developing his own ideas on form, line, color, and balance; <em>Sicilian Landscape</em> works simultaneously as a recognizable image and a painterly exercise in contrasting color.</p> |
| BF2532 | <p>In this watercolor painted in 1939, a year before his death, Paul Klee addresses the theme of distant time. Below a horizontal line, a cluster of jumbled forms evokes ancient or prehistoric symbols. During the 1930s, the decorated walls of Paleolithic caves were becoming increasingly well known; watercolor copies and photographic prints of the cave images featured in the exhibition <em>Prehistoric Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa</em>, presented in Frankfurt in 1936 and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1937.</p> |
| BF605 | <p>The two stylized birds, facing in opposite directions, are connected by the curving branch on which they both perch. This motif often appears on Pennsylvania German birth and baptismal certificates known as Taufscheine. A type of fraktur, a style of manuscript art whose name derives from its fractured lettering, Taufscheine combined information about a child's birth and the baptism into one document and often included biographical details about the child and their parents.</p> |
| BF2524 | <p>A dark gray spot with a lurid red halo forms the nucleus of <em>Color Motif</em>. Surrounding this spot are jagged red shapes, squiggles of black, and thin washes of light blue, all encompassed in a field of pink. The small size and intricate facture of <em>Color Motif</em> invite close looking and thus heightened exposure to the object and its contents: in this case, perhaps an impression of human flesh freshly wounded by gunshot. Wols, who was a German citizen, began to focus on small-scale works on paper at the outbreak of World War II, when he was interned in his adopted home of France.</p> |
| BF2075 | <p>This work is currently on loan to the exhibition "Henri Matisse 1941-1954" at The Grand Palais, Paris, March 24 - July 26, 2026. Created forty-one years after his famous <em>Bonheur de vivre</em>, this painting attests to the continued importance of color in Matisse's oeuvre. As in the nearby <em>Two Young Girls in a Coral Interior, Blue Garden</em> (BF2092), Matisse relies on the quantity and shape of the colored surface to determine the contours of the objects represented. This was the last painting by Matisse to enter Barnes's collection.</p> |
| BF558 | <p>This watercolor comes from a group of drawings and paintings depicting a woman seated in an armchair, a subject that preoccupied Picasso with intensity during the summer he spent in the beach town Biarritz in 1918. Some have naturalistic details; others, like this sheet, are characterized by schematized forms and geometric structure. Here, the figure clasps her hands at the center of the composition, and her long, billowing hair echoes the scrolls from the furniture. The series reflects Picasso's repeated engagement with a single motif in service of stylistic modulation and experimentation.</p> |
| BF2507 | <p>Hankins was a Russian-born Philadelphian who worked for the WPA and studied at the Barnes. <em>Ocean</em> is an abstracted image of blue-and-white waves washing over a beach, fractured by black, red, and white geometric and organic shapes. Hankins wrote in his book <em>The Way to Art</em>, "My paintings are based on a realistic thought, using shapes and forms derived from nature to express that thought."</p> |
| BF1078 | <p>This retablo (devotional painting) exhibits the style of Roman Catholic painters in New Mexico during the 19th century. It depicts a scene from the New Testament in which the archangel Saint Michael slays a multiheaded dragon, likely the fallen angel Satan. Michael is arrayed in battle armor and raises a Spanish saber above his head to execute the dragon, which spews fire as Michael tramples it. This panel would have been used for private prayer in a home or chapel.</p> |
| BF2525 | <p>This tiny gouache (opaque watercolor) by the German artist Wols is one of the latest and most abstract paintings that Albert Barnes collected. Irregular peach- and cream-colored areas form a vertical central motif, stitched together by fine lines of black ink. Some of these lines are short and regular, like the teeth of a zipper; others are longer and chaotic. <em>Bird's-Eye View</em> is an example of <em>art informel</em>, a genre of abstract, postwar European painting defined by a gestural technique and improvisatory methodology. But Wols's deliberate composition and delicate detail attest that this painting was not truly spontaneous: these features invite meditative looking, recalling the artist's statement that "the dimensions of the human hand are holy."</p> |
| BF1163 | <p>The art critic Carl Van Vechten, a friend of Dr. Barnes, once described the challenge of portraying cats: "The beauty of the cat is very deceptive, for under the grace of the furry exterior lie steel-like muscles, [and its] face bears a character of both finesse and hilarity." Few cat portraitists, Van Vechten lamented, "can go beyond externals." Arguably, one of them was the unidentified Pennsylvania German artist who rendered this proud gray-and-orange calico. And she is well placed on this wall, because Paul Klee—several of whose works hang nearby—was a great admirer of cats.</p> |
| BF1004 | <p>Klee traveled to the Mediterranean every summer beginning in 1924, and he became fascinated with excavation sites in the region. <em>Place Signs</em> probably represents one such site in mainland Italy or the island of Sicily. Like an archaeologist, Klee brings objects to the surface—including ladders, a building, and a bowl—placing them against a patchwork of grass, water, and trees that evokes an archaeologist's grid. The eyes, spade, and cross act as more symbolic excavations, referring to the ways in which meaning and understanding emerge through this visual site.</p> |
| BF705 | <p>In his Bermuda landscapes, Demuth experimented with cubist notions of content and form as well as with varying qualities of light. In <em>Masts and Foliage</em>, wispy trees in the foreground offset a crystalline, pyramidal mass of water, ships, and sky.</p> |
| BF2534 | <p>Klee gave this small watercolor the title <em>Schlecte Musik Kapelle (Bad Music Band)</em>. Perhaps the music's badness has resulted from a lack of harmony: the musicians ignore each other as they play their instruments, though at least the yellow trumpeter at front seems to be having fun. Does the purple haze radiating from the band express their dissonant clamor? Klee—a talented violinist from a family of professional musicians—experimented throughout his career with ways of translating musical motifs into painting.</p> |
| BF2533 | <p>Swiss-born artist Paul Klee painted this small watercolor in 1939—a year of enormous productivity during which he created over 1,200 works. This burst of creative energy came after several years of physical suffering due to an undiagnosed disease that affected his skin and internal organs. It is hard not to associate Klee's lingering health problems with the melancholy mood of many works from the late 1930s, including this one. Here the artist presents a flower bearing a sad, human expression.</p> |
| BF721 | <p>Rohland's rainbow bouquet of zinnias and poppies is a modern rendition of the 19th-century botanical art also displayed in this room. Dr. Barnes bought <em>Flower Piece</em> in 1920, after a memorable encounter with Rohland's work. He wrote to the artist, "I've just as vivid a sense of your monotypes this morning as I had when I saw them on Sunday... So I enclose a check, leaving it to you whether you send me five or six of them including [<em>Flower Piece</em>]."</p> |
| BF483 | <p>A woman wearing a pink chemise sits next to a mirror. The mirror tilts toward her, exaggerating the viewer's high vantage point and depicting her reflection in splotchy colors. While the woman's body is ample and exposed, her facial expression is inscrutable, registering perhaps boredom or contemplation. Signed and dated "Pascin 1914" on the upper right, <em>Seated Girl in Chemise</em> is typical of the single-figure studies that the Bulgarian-born artist produced in his adopted home of Paris, just prior to emigrating to the United States at the outbreak of World War I.</p> |
| BF697 | <p>With a quick and free line, Pascin depicts a family striking a pose. Each subject is carefully individualized, from the reserved mother and the laid-back father to the three daughters, respectively unguarded, shy, and pensive. These sitters differ from the types populating the street scenes Pascin sketched during his travels in the American South and Cuba in 1915, after he had emigrated from Paris to the United States before the First World War.</p> |
| BF2057 | <p>This small work is an homage to another painting in the Barnes collection: Henri Matisse's <em>The Joy of Life</em> (1905–6). The artist, Florence Shubert, was a student at the Barnes Foundation in the mid-1940s; she would have had ample opportunity to study Matisse's monumental canvas, which Albert Barnes purchased in 1923. Although nonrepresentational, Shubert's piece references some of the colors of Matisse's painting, including yellow and blue, as well as the bright red mark at the center of the canvas. This painting is one of only a few purely abstract works Dr. Barnes collected.</p> |
| BF433 | <p>The expatriate artist Alice Halicka was born in Krakow, Poland, to a wealthy Jewish family. She moved to Paris in 1912 and quickly became part of a wide circle of cubists. This work demonstrates her take on the still-life compositions favored by her cubist friends and her husband, the fellow Polish expatriate Louis Marcoussis. Halicka would move on from these painterly preoccupations to work in multiple media, creating whimsical collages, fabric designs, book illustrations, and ballet sets.</p> |
| BF726 | <p>In this watercolor by Georges Rouault, an armored knight on horseback strides forward to trample a few vanquished antagonists. The circular shape, black outlines, and profile figures complement the medieval subject by evoking a stained-glass roundel in a Gothic window. In 1925 the work was reproduced in the periodical <em>Das Kunstblatt</em> to accompany a poem written by Rouault in archaizing French. The poem describes a spiritual journey invoking art from ancient Egypt to the French impressionist Camille Corot as well as religious figures such as Christ and Joan of Arc.</p> |
| BF699 | <p>Cézanne designed only three lithographs during his career, largely at the request of his dealer, Ambroise Vollard. Vollard published <em>The Small Bathers</em> in a special album of prints in 1897. The composition is closely related to multiple bather paintings and watercolors that Cézanne executed in the 1890s. Cézanne worked with the printmaker Auguste Clot to produce his lithographs. This example is from the first edition of color prints that Clot pulled, featuring Cézanne's signature on the bottom right.</p> |
| BF644 | <p>Charles Demuth, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, spent several years in Paris painting the performers he saw there. Here, Demuth takes advantage of watercolor's fluidity to emphasize the movements of trapeze artists.</p> |
| BF695 | <p>In the mid-1890s, Prendergast began painting complex, multifigure arrangements of the Massachusetts seashore. This scene shows the wide, placid beach of Revere, just north of Boston, offsetting the vertical format of the paper. The zigzag of silhouetted figures across the sand catches the eye amid the shimmering light and reflections. <em>On the Beach</em> reflects the popularity of seashore leisure time in America, a novelty brought about by labor reforms and public transportation.</p> |
| BF768 | <p>Violette de Mazia was a legendary teacher at the Barnes for over 60 years and served as director of education after the death of Albert Barnes in 1951. Not much is known about this work—when it was made or what inspired it—but in it we can see de Mazia's interest in using line to represent the curvilinear forms of a hairless figure in profile.</p> |
| BF2092 | <p>This work is currently on loan to the exhibition "Henri Matisse 1941-1954" at The Grand Palais, Paris, March 24 - July 26, 2026. From 1943 to 1949, Matisse lived at the Villa Le Rêve, a seaside estate in Vence, France. In 1947, he began working on a series of pictures known as the Vence Interiors, which includes a group of eight paintings representing two girls (a young English woman and her sister) reading. Matisse uses the same arrangement in each version: the girls are seated at a table covered with diverse objects, such as a book, a plate, and a bouquet of flowers, while behind them is a window through which an olive tree appears. Though the motif is similar in all the canvases of this subseries, Matisse varies the color chord from one painting to another, producing a totally different environment and atmosphere each time.</p> |
| BF602 | <p>Most of Demuth's watercolors from this time record the gay nightclubs, cafés, and bathhouses he frequented in Greenwich Village. Here he captured the ambience of nightlife in New York City through vaudeville performers like the acrobats pictured here. The central figure balances a box of flowers that cascades down and highlights his sensually muscular legs. The ambiguous yellow orb may be a stage light.</p> |
| BF2526 | <p>The German-born artist Wols created this small gouache-and-pen image while living an increasingly chaotic life in the charged cultural milieu of postwar Paris. Per the title, the central motif is quasi-abstract: feather-like, but not a feather. It has a vertical stem that blooms into a dark core and radiates hairy black lines; watery circles and irregular polygons spangle the composition. The myopic confrontation of this motif recalls Wols's quotation of the famous existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, his occasional supporter: "Objects shouldn't touch, for they do not live. And yet they touch me: It's unbearable."</p> |
| BF2523 | <p>This tiny painting by the German artist known as Wols is perhaps the most abstract work in the collection, and one of the last objects Albert Barnes purchased before his death in 1951. Wols moved to Paris in 1932 and worked as a photographer. After being imprisoned for 14 months World War II (for his German citizenship), he turned his focus to oils and watercolors.</p> |
| BF706 | <p>A sprig of blue flax, three poppy anemones, and two daisies are arranged like a bouquet on a blank page. Note how the artist faithfully represents details like the daisies' spiky leaves and luminous yellow center, and the spiral shape of the flax buds about to unfurl. The artist is unknown, but the style of <em>Red and Blue Flowers and White Daisy</em> recalls that of two botanical watercolors on this wall that are signed "Mélanie Marc, 1842" (<em>Field Flowers</em>, and <em>Flowers with Yellow Rose</em>).</p> |
| BF741 | <p>A dancer in a sharp gray suit performs at Marshall's Hotel, a Black-owned establishment in New York. Marshall's was a major center of African American cultural and intellectual life in the city during the early 20th century. Many white patrons also came here to experience the musical performances, discussions, and other events that would lay the foundation for the Harlem Renaissance. Demuth made this watercolor after Marshall's closed in 1913, offering a retrospective look at a place key to the birth of American modernism.</p> |
| BF770 | <p>When Chagall moved to Paris from his home city, Vitebsk (in modern Belarus), he lived in an artists' colony known as La Ruche (The Beehive) in the neighborhood of Montparnasse. He may have may have painted this lively image of firework-like decorations, a green-tinged woman, and conversing men from observations of the Montparnasse café scene. The man standing and reading outside the green partition could be a portrait of Chagall's father, who was a Hasidic Jew.</p> |
| BF700 | <p>An unknown artist has gathered an array of spring flowers into a bouquet: light purple hyacinth, blue poppy anemone, violet primrose, and yellow-and-white narcissus (two "double daffodils" and two classic ones). This type of composition had been favored by the celebrated botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), to explore the decorative potential of botanical subjects. Images like <em>Narcissus and Other Flowers</em>, in turn, informed depictions of flowers in modern art: for example, Paul Rohland's <em>Zinnias</em> (c. 1920) and Henri Matisse's <em>Figure with Bouquet</em> (1939), also in Room 17.</p> |
| BF321 | <p>The American-born Mary Cassatt was one of only a few women to have exhibited with the French impressionists. When she was 15, she began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Later, she lived and worked in Paris, where she befriended Edgar Degas and drew inspiration from his painting style. This sketch was brought into the collection at the same time as Cassatt's <em>Woman with Nude Boy at Her Right</em>, which hangs in Room 17. Both works show a maternal figure gazing down at the young child in her arms—a common subject for Cassatt, who painted domestic scenes throughout her career.</p> |
| A425 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Horses were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. The person who dedicated this horse figurine may have chosen it to communicate their wealth or status.</p> |
| A10 | <p>When Dr. Barnes purchased this stone head, it came with a label identifying it as "Farnabese." This name likely refers to Pharnabazus II, a ruler in the Persian Empire in the fifth century BCE. Images of Pharnabazus II appear on coins from ancient Greece and Persia and share features with the head at the Barnes, specifically the facial hair, large eyes, and helmet. If this head does depict Pharnabazus II, it is a very rare example of a stone portrait of the figure.</p> |
| A51 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Cows and bulls were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. The twisted tail and notched hooves seen on this bull figurine appear on similar objects found at Olympia.</p> |
| A85 | <p>Eros, the god of love, was a popular subject during the Hellenistic period of Greco-Roman history. This ceramic figurine shows the youthful god in flight—he has a hole at the top of each shoulder for his wings, cast separately—and his outstretched hands once held a small object, maybe an apple. He is nude, aside from the flowered wreath, and would have been painted with bright colors. Such figures of Eros were common in funerary, votive, and domestic contexts.</p> |
| A27 | <p>This small object closely matches examples of so-called "fertility figurines" from the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period. These figurines were originally thought to represent concubines or fertility fetishes, as the first examples discovered by archaeologists were largely female, nude, and found in male burials. However, later discoveries included similar figurines depicting men as well, and figurines were found in both male and female graves in addition to ritual deposits. Many of these figurines appear to have been deliberately broken. Perhaps they were used in religious rituals, where they were fractured in the performance of magical spells.</p> |
| BF1056a | <p>Painted in an elegant style associated with artists working in Paris during the 1300s, these two diminutive images are probably fragments of the same Gradual—the principal choir book used in the Mass. Scribe lines for musical notation are faintly visible at the images' margins. At left, a priest stands at an altar and raises the consecrated Eucharistic Host ; an acolyte behind him holds an enormous candle. At right, an enthroned king discourses with five other men. He is probably King David, author of the Psalms, which were routinely chanted at Mass.</p> |
| BF1046 | <p>The newborn Christ lies swaddled in a manger while his mother, the Virgin Mary, kneels in prayer. Above, one angel prays and another plays a medieval violin. The imprecise application of paint, seen in details such as the burning candle and figures' rosy cheeks, suggests that a nun created this image, perhaps to bind in a Gospel book, choir book, or prayer book. The fantastical architecture enshrining the holy figures likely helped the nun to organize her devotional engagement with the scene.</p> |
| BF1049 | <p>This page from a medieval manuscript presents four scenes of Christ's Incarnation. In the bottom half, the Angel Gabriel approaches the enthroned Virgin Mary with a banderole reading "Ave Maria," announcing that she will be the mother of God. To the right, Mary shares the good news with her cousin Elizabeth. Above, the newborn Christ appears to climb out of the manger, foreshadowing how he would rise from his tomb as an adult; Mary and her husband, Joseph, contemplate the sacred mystery. Meanwhile, angels burst from the sky to celebrate. Latin texts on the back of the page indicate that it came from a breviary, a liturgical book used for celebrating the Divine Office. BF1051—which shows scenes of Adam and Eve—is from the same book.</p> |
| BF1048 | <p>The Virgin Mary holds the newborn Christ while Joseph sits nearby and an ox and donkey hold a blanket above the manger. Mary's banderole reads, "My soul is magnified in me this day, more than all the days since I was born" (Judith 12:18); Joseph's banderole is no longer legible. Above, angels play a violin, harp, and psaltery. Below, three figures in medieval dress (perhaps two monks and a nun) kneel in adoration in a field of flowers. The imprecise application of paint and details such as the figures' rosy cheeks suggest that a nun created this image, perhaps to bind in a Gospel book, choir book, or prayer book.</p> |
| BF1051 | <p>A medieval artist has vibrantly painted the story of Adam and Eve in four episodes. Above, God creates Eve from Adam's rib, blessing both, and then weds the couple. Below, a serpent tempts them to eat from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, and then a sword-brandishing angel drives them from the gates of Paradise. A Latin text on the back of the page (the prayer <em>Benedictione perpetua benedicat nos Pater eternus</em> indicates that it came from a breviary, a liturgical book used for celebrating the Divine Office. Another manuscript leaf in the collection (BF1049)—which shows the narrative of Christ's Incarnation—is from the same book.</p> |
| BF1050 | <p>A large initial <em>D</em>, beginning the word <em>Deus</em> (God), frames a scene of Christ before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Christ's hands are bound; Pilate is about to hand him over to crowds who wish to crucify him. A boy offers Pilate a pitcher of water so that he can wash his hands to express his reluctance (Matthew 27). The checkerboard background encourages contemplation of the figures and their actions. Indeed, this page comes from a Book of Hours—a prayerbook for laypeople—and the <em>Deus</em> begins a series of prayers and hymns for the Office of Christ's Passion.</p> |
| BF1054 | <p>This colorful leaf probably came from a book of Psalms. It depicts one of the most joyous events of scriptural history, known as the Visitation and recorded in the Gospel of Luke. The Virgin Mary, to the left and pregnant with Christ, rushes to announce the news to her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist. The women embrace and gaze into each other's eyes; the pure gold background helps viewers to focus on the encounter, which was also the source of the sublime <em>Ave Maria</em> prayer and <em>Magnificat</em> hymn.</p> |
| BF1052 | <p>The newborn Christ lies swaddled in a manger and reaches toward his mother, the Virgin Mary, while Joseph sits nearby. The resemblance of Christ's manger to a Gothic tomb poignantly signals his eventual sacrifice. Above, God the Father extends a banderole reading, "You are my son, whom I have begotten today" (Psalm 2:7), and two angels play violins. The imprecise application of paint, seen in such details as the burning candle and the figures' rosy cheeks, suggests that a nun created this image, perhaps to bind in a Gospel book, choir book, or prayer book.</p> |
| BF1053 | <p>The Virgin Mary and Christ Child sit together on a shrine-like throne decorated with arches, quatrefoils, diamonds, and dots. This affecting scene highlights the human Incarnation of Christ, believed to be instrumental for the salvation of humankind. The imprecise application of paint and details like the figures' rosy cheeks indicate that a nun made this image for private devotion and perhaps bound it within a choir book or prayer book.</p> |
| BF1047 | <p>The Virgin Mary and Christ Child sit together on a shrine-like throne with flowering branches. This affecting scene highlights the human Incarnation of Christ, believed to be instrumental for the salvation of humankind. The imprecise application of paint and details such as the rosy cheeks indicate that a nun made this image for private devotion and perhaps bound it within a prayer book or choir book.</p> |
| BF466 | <p>This canvas is a part of a series of paintings (including two other canvases hung nearby) produced by Hartley during a period in which he shared a studio with his close friend and fellow artist Charles Demuth. They spent the summer of 1916 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and traveled to Bermuda in the winter of 1916–17. The flat, geometric planes represent a sailboat, with the mast, hull, and sail rendered in a muted color palette specific to this period of Hartley's career.</p> |
| BF465 | <p>Here Hartley has abstracted the sails, hull, and rudder of a boat into a compact series of geometric shapes, all arranged parallel to the picture surface. The image is insistently flat, and yet the overlapping planes slyly hint at spatial recession. The sails have the effect of placid semaphores; the circular motif, rendered in stark black and white, provides a touch of drama. A variation of this scheme, painted as a companion piece, hangs on the same wall. Hartley painted both pictures in Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the second half of 1916. He departed for Bermuda in December of that year—accompanied in both locations by his friend artist Charles Demuth.</p> |
| BF297 | <p>The younger brother of the post-impressionist painter Maurice Prendergast, Charles Prendergast was an artist-craftsman who began making panels in a medieval style and technique in 1912. He used tempera and gold leaf on a ground covered in gesso, rendering his figures with incised lines. This whimsical, fantastical landscape containing people, an angel, quadrupeds, fish, and multicolored trees and hills draws from medieval European, Byzantine, Chinese, Egyptian, and Persian art.</p> |
| BF1044 | <p>In this late medieval manuscript miniature, Christ stands on an open sarcophagus, showing his side wound to the Dominican friar kneeling nearby. The top of the Cross is visible behind him; instruments of his Passion appear all around, including the lance that pierced his side, a spitting antagonist, and the dice with which soldiers gambled for his garments. The ciborium and the wafers issuing from a disembodied hand associate this scene with the Eucharist. The friar is labeled "Chaplain," and his open codex reveals the first line from Psalm 51: "Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam" (Have mercy on me, God, according to your great mercy). This Psalm was used in the Office of the Dead and suggests that this miniature—along with the nearby Crucifixion scene (BF1045)—belonged to a breviary, a type of prayer book, used by nuns.</p> |
| BF753 | <p>This is an illustration from the Persian poem <em>Khosrow and Shirin</em> by Nizami Ganjavi (d. 1209), one of five poems in Nizami's <em>Khamsa</em> ("Quintet"). Shirin was a virtuous Armenian princess who falls in love with the Persian king Khosrow, her eventual husband. At right we see her, enthroned, addressing another woman; at left, she begins her journey to Khosrow on horseback. This image seems to be an early 20th-century evocation of earlier Persian illustrations, made perhaps in Iran or Turkey for the foreign market.</p> |
| BF752 | <p>In this unidentified battle scene from a Persian <em>Shahnameh</em> manuscript, armed horsemen clash across an undulating landscape comprising flowery lilac and green hills dominated by a single big tree. The <em>Shahnameh</em>, by Abolqasem Ferdowsi (d. 1020), was a popular epic poem narrating the past of the Persian Empire down to the Islamic conquest; in the text the poet highlights various moral virtues from the past in order to improve the future. Images like this battle scene circulated along with the text in illustrating these virtues, serving as platforms for meditation and imitation. The schematic presentation is typical of production in 16th-century Shiraz, where women and men worked together in family workshops.</p> |
| BF793 | <p>This manuscript leaf comes from a Book of Hours illuminated by the French court painter Jean Bourdichon. It depicts the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, when she ascended from her tomb into Heaven, and blends the schematized elegance of the Gothic style with a Renaissance interest in scientific perspective. Mary rises on a cloud above adoring apostles and between shimmering blue angels. Wildflowers and a pious manticore (a mythological beast) grace the margins. Books of Hours were prayer books used by those in the upper levels of medieval society, both secular and religious. Two other manuscript leaves on this wall were cut from the same book.</p> |
| BF756 | <p>This miniature from a Persian <em>Shahnameh</em> miniature shows an episode from the battle of the Iranians and the Turanians. Here, the Iranian hero Rostam, at lower left, confronts his rival Ashkabus while his fearsome horse Rakhsh ("Thunder") rests. Rostam aims a projectile to kill Ashkabus's ornately clad horse, after which he will defeat Ashkabus himself. The <em>Shahnameh</em>, by Abolqasem Ferdowsi (d. 1020), was a popular epic poem narrating the past of the Persian Empire down to the Islamic conquest; in the text the poet highlights various moral virtues from the past in order to improve the future. Images like this battle scene circulated along with the text in illustrating these virtues, serving as platforms for meditation and imitation. The schematic presentation is typical of production in 16th-century Shiraz, where women and men worked together in family workshops.</p> |
| BF2546 | <p>An upright brown boulder forms the nexus of <em>Tree and Rock</em>; blue-green waves splash against it, and slender trees seem to grow from it. Maurer, an avant-garde American painter, lived in France until 1914 and painted his gemlike landscapes mostly in the Champagne region. He engaged the Fauvist idiom to reveal how color could function as light and to draw attention beyond concrete appearances and toward the sensations that nature aroused in him.</p> |
| BF468 | <p>This coffin fragment belonged to a temple singer, named Tantwenemherti, of the god Amun. The visible side is the interior of the coffin and depicts an image of the god Anubis as a mummy with a human-headed ba bird. On the exterior side, not visible, are scenes of Tantwenemherti as a ba bird greeting the gods Anubis, a personification of the West, Osiris, and Hathor, as well as a hieroglyphic offering text and a border decorated with cobras, falcons, gods, and ba birds.</p> |
| BF428 | <p>A monumental cypress tree looms above a group of goats and goatherds in a tan field; green and blue mountains zigzag through the background. Gritchenko had begun his career among avant-garde circles in Moscow but fled following the revolutions of 1918. He spent the next few years immersing himself in Mediterranean sites, seeking to capture what he understood as deep connections between ancient artistic traditions and modernism.</p> |
| BF1080 | <p>This portrait depicts the Japanese master calligrapher Ono no Michikaze (894–966). He is shown seated on a tatami with a brush in his right hand, as if about to write on the sheet of paper before him. At the front edge of the tatami is a lacquer writing-box containing ink sticks and an ink stone; the inscription is a quotation from the Lotus Sutra. The Barnes portrait is based on a famous medieval painting attributed to Raiju Hokkyô, now in the Museum of the Imperial Collections in Tokyo.</p> |
| BF2508 | <p>Wang Shimin was the eldest of the "Four Wangs" who led the Orthodox school of painting in the early Qing period. In the small format of a fan, he portrays a panoramic view of wooded mountains with a river running through the foreground. The inscription at the top indicates that Wang Shimin painted the landscape in the style of the Yuan dynasty artist Huang Gongwang (1269–1354). Reducing Huang's calligraphic style to a graphic formula, Shimin built his kinetic brushstrokes into rising and falling "breath-force" (<em>qishi</em>) movements that convey nature's boundless energy.</p> |
| BF269 | <p>Nothing is still in this still life. An undulating table holds bouquets of red flowers bursting from white and mustard-yellow vases. Objects lean into one another, as if set off kilter by the weight of the paint itself— especially in the fervently impastoed blossoms that tangle with the blackish background.</p> |
| BF277 | <p><em>Amphiteatre</em> shows the famous theater of Epidauros, Greece, which was built by Polykleitos the Younger in the fourth century BCE and praised by the geographer Pausanias (second century CE). Gritchenko had begun his painting career among avant-garde circles in Moscow but fled following the revolutions of 1918. He spent the next few years immersing himself in Mediterranean sites, seeking to capture what he understood as deep connections between ancient art and modernism. Dr. Barnes admired Gritchenko's thoughtful, personal interpretations of past and present artistic traditions.</p> |
| A53 | <p>Eros, the god of love, was a popular subject for artists during the Hellenistic period of Greco-Roman history. This ceramic figurine shows the youthful god in flight—he has a hole at the top of each shoulder for his wings, cast separately, as well as a "hang hole" on his back. He would have been gaily painted with bright colors, and he may have held a musical instrument in his outstretched hands. Such figures of Eros were common in funerary, votive, and domestic contexts.</p> |
| BF866 | <p>The resurrected Christ rises triumphantly from an opened tomb. He wears a red cape and holds his right hand forth in blessing; three Roman guards recoil in shock at this miracle. Signs that The Resurrection is a modern imitation of a medieval painting include the summarily treated landscape and the hovering angel, who seems to be transplanted from a scene of Christ's Baptism (in which angels hold his garments).</p> |
| BF832 | <p>A young woman, absorbed in thought or prayer, clasps a rosary with silver and gold beads. She wears a dark fur-lined dress with gold braid at the waist, a cross, a large gold chain, and a white headdress, and her forehead is adorned with an exquisitely painted glass bead. The Latin inscription at the top left notes that the subject died in 1499, meaning that this portrait was painted for the memory of her loved ones.</p> |
| BF842 | <p>Saint Katherine, one of the most popular saints in medieval Christendom, was believed to have been the scholarly daughter of the governor of Alexandria, Egypt. Katherine refused to participate in pagan worship, and moreover she used her oratorical skills to convert thousands of Roman subjects to Christianity. In this painting by the Spanish artist Blasco de Grañén, Katherine debates with the enthroned Roman emperor Maxentius (r. 306–12 CE). Although Maxentius conspires with his assistants to dispatch Katherine, her gold halo (a symbol of divine light) and the right hand of God emerging from a cloud in blessing show the belief that her martyrdom will be rewarded with eternal life in Heaven. This painting was once part of a monumental altarpiece in a church, designed to broadcast the drama of faith and redemption to the congregation, and therefore its message would have been especially powerful to viewers.</p> |
| BF830 | <p>This half-length portrait shows a seated man gazing intently to his left. The painting was once in the collection of the dukes of Dessau, Germany, suggesting that the subject was a nobleman from that region. Based on the small wrinkles around his eyes, brow, and mouth, we believe he may have between 30 and 40 years old when the portrait was made. His high status is announced through details like the red brocade garment and the ring on his finger.</p> |
| BF2037 | <p>An African American woman wearing a bright yellow shirt with black polka dots sits on a porch swing, holding its chain with one hand and resting her head on the other. The artist, Luigi Settanni, was an Italian immigrant who studied at the Barnes Foundation and probably painted this canvas in New Orleans. The luscious colors and squiggly forms echo Chaim Soutine's <em>Pastry Chef</em>, its pendant image on this wall. The painting was previously titled Topsy, which may refer to the character of a young enslaved girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Such a reference might indicate the stereotypes through which Settanni viewed his subject—childlike, happy-go-lucky, and redeemed through white intervention. The painting was never published with this title, however.</p> |
| BF384 | <p>In this moody portrait, a woman with her cheek resting on her hand appears to have just awoken from a daydream. The delicacy of the flowers and handling of the paint recall the diaphanous qualities of a watercolor. The model's black eyes, coat collar, and muff counterbalance the predominance of the pastel hues. Laurencin was often associated with Cubism despite not painting in a discernably Cubist style. She instead used elongated and stylized forms to develop her signature motif of the willowy, ethereal woman-child who inhabits an almost exclusively feminine world.</p> |
| BF442 | <p>When Albert Barnes first visited Chaim Soutine's Paris studio in 1922, the struggling artist was known only in the city's bohemian circles. Seeing this painting of a pastry chef sparked Dr. Barnes to buy more than 50 works by Soutine in the course of a few weeks, through the art dealer Paul Guillaume. In 1923, Guillaume recounted his discovery of Soutine's work: "One day when I had gone to a painter's house to see a picture by Modigliani I noticed in a corner of the studio a work which immediately got me excited. It was a Soutine; and it showed a pastry chef—an incredible, captivating, tangible, colorful pastry chef, cursed with a huge, magnificent ear, unexpected but right; a masterpiece. I bought it."</p> |
| A95 | <p>The oversized eyes, sharp cheekbones, and pointed beard of this fragmentary head suggest it was made on the island of Cyprus, whose distinct style of art set it apart from the rest of ancient Greece. The head likely came from a votive figurine, and its elaborate headdress may indicate that it represented a priest.</p> |
| A39 | <p>Terracotta figurines were common dedications throughout the ancient Greek world. This figurine represents Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was often depicted in the nude. The delicate jewelry that decorates her chest and arms, as well as the snakelike band around her thigh, suggest that this example was produced in Asia Minor.</p> |
| A69 | <p>This squash-blossom necklace features silver-white flowers and a <em>názhah</em> (crescent) pendant. Native accounts identify the blossoms as squash, sunflowers, or datura. Some Navajo see the crescent as the curved bow of Nayenezgáni (Monster Slayer), who, with his brother, rid the world of evil. Worn on the body, the metal flowers carry themes of procreation, pollination, and protection. The domed turquoise stones in this pendant were likely sourced from Persia (present-day Iran) by traders.</p> |
| A24 | <p>The tall, round crown on this figure, known as a polos, identifies the subject as a priestess or deity. It may represent Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, as such figurines were popular in sixth-century BCE Sicily. The scale of this example, however, suggests that it is a modern production.</p> |
| A12 | <p>This small terracotta figurine depicts the Greek god Eros, know in the Roman world as Cupid. Sculptures of this type were common in the ancient Greco-Roman world and have been found in graves and temple remains across the Mediterranean. Although Dr. Barnes assumed that this object was ancient, it is possible that it is a modern reproduction, perhaps even a forgery, made to look much older than it actually is.</p> |
| A25 | <p>Eros, the god of love, was a popular subject for artists during the Hellenistic period of Greco-Roman history, and ceramic figurines of the god such as this one were common in funerary, votive, and domestic contexts Here the youthful god holds his hands outstretched, as if holding a musical instrument. The sculpture originally would have been painted with bright colors, which faded over time. On his back are the Greek letters <em>gamma</em> and <em>omicron</em> (the signature of an artist or workshop) as well as a "hang hole," indicating that the figure might have been once attached to a wall or column.</p> |
| A473 | <p>This ivory cow with a blanket on its back may have come from a tableau beneath a shrine dedicated to the Hindu god Krishna. Similar images of cows wearing blankets with upraised heads are found on narrative scenes on textiles (<em>pichhwais</em>) produced to celebrate the Festival of Cows (Gopashtami), which were usually hung as a backdrop to a shrine. The Festival of Cows celebrates the coming of age of young Krishna, when his father elevated him from herding calves to adult cows.</p> |
| A84 | <p>This small object closely matches examples of so-called "fertility figurines" from the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period, which were often placed in burials or in ritual deposits. Such figurines usually depict women and have exaggerated pubic triangles, buttocks, and wigs. In this example the pubic triangle is fashioned into a beaded thong, and the back of the head has holes for the attachment of hair, perhaps made from leather or beads. The small dot on each buttock may represent tattoos or scarification, both of which carried magical symbolism.</p> |
| A441 | <p>Small figurines were popular in eighth century BCE Greek sanctuaries, where worshipers would purchase them from local workshops and then dedicate them to the gods. Itinerant bronze workers came from around Greece to provide this service, and local styles have been identified within the corpus of Geometric animal figurines. The openwork stand of this figurine is associated with the Laconian type.</p> |
| A5 | <p>This vessel was known in the ancient Greek world as an askos. Often created in the form of animals, these objects were used to hold and pour liquids like perfumed oils. This bird-shaped example features a reclining female nude on one side and a winged figure on the other. Further research is needed to determine the precise origins of this charming object.</p> |
| A49 | <p>This statuette of Isis is missing her arms, the nursing infant Horus, parts of her crown, and her original inlaid eyes, but it still exhibits many fine details that illustrate the skill of Egyptian metalworkers. Visible on her dress is a wrapping pattern of feathers that form wings over her legs. These wings allude to her role in the myth of Osiris, her murdered husband: Isis, having gathered the chopped-up parts of Osiris's body, revived his mummified body with magic and by flapping breath back into his body with her wings.</p> |
| A68 | <p>Egypt was famous for producing glass objects in the vivid blue color known as "Egyptian blue," which can be seen in this glass statuette. Colored blue glass was a cheaper alternative to the precious blue stone lapis lazuli, which came from Afghanistan and had to be acquired through trade. However, this object is a modern forgery, as it was made with techniques not used in ancient Egypt. In addition, the depiction of the goddess Hathor as a cow suckling the infant pharaoh was copied from a temple relief at Thebes (present-day Luxor) and is not an image found in authentic Egyptian glass objects. </p> |
| A7 | <p>The most important god in later Egyptian history was Amun-Ra. He was the combination of two older gods, the creator god Amun and the sun god Ra. This statuette has the two feathers of Amun and the sun disk of Ra in his crown, and he wears a false beard. Small bronze statuettes like this would have been used as presents to the gods, given by a person visiting a temple, probably asking the god for help or favor.</p> |
| A93 | <p>A major innovation of Hellenistic art was the introduction of a wide variety of subjects, as practitioners moved beyond the idealized human form that dominated earlier periods of ancient Greek art. Objects such as this statuette of an emaciated man with exaggerated features, known as a "grotesque," became popular, along with images of children, disabled people, and the elderly.</p> |
| A412 | <p>In ancient Egypt Baboons were kept as pets or trained as guard animals due to their intelligence and fearsomely large teeth. Baboons were also believed to be one of the forms taken by the god Thoth, who was associated with knowledge, wisdom, and writing. This statue was likely a Thoth baboon, and it would have been placed in a small shrine or temple, where it would have been the focus of worship. The statue could also have been an offering given to the god.</p> |
| A419 | <p>Neith, "the terrifying one," was a goddess associated with hunting and war, and she was often depicted holding a bow and a handful of arrows. Looking at this statuette you can see her hands are clenched, and she may have originally held a bow and arrows, which are now missing. She was also the patron goddess of the red crown of Lower Egypt, one of the royal crowns worn by the pharaoh, which you can see on her head.</p> |
| A48 | <p>The god Bes was a dwarf with a bearded face and a ferocious grimace. Here he wields a knife in one hand and grasps a snake in the other. A hole above his testicles probably held an erect phallus made of stone or a different material. Despite his fearsome appearance, Bes was a protective god, who guarded against evil forces. His grotesque appearance and frontal depiction may have been an inspiration for the Greek Gorgons such as Medusa.</p> |
| A424 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Bulls and horses were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. It is difficult to identify the animal depicted here. The body of this figurine resembles a horse, with its thin legs and long tail, but the pointed projections on its head suggest the horns of a bull.</p> |
| A423 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Horses were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. The person who dedicated this horse figurine may have chosen it to communicate their wealth or status. The defined shoulders of this example set it apart from the other objects at the Barnes, but similar figurines have been found at Greek sanctuaries.</p> |
| A89 | <p>The god Nefertum was said to have arisen from the waters of creation inside a blue lotus flower. He took the form of a youthful and beautiful man with a lotus flower and two feather plumes on his head; he was associated with perfume and the rising sun. In this statuette you can see the lotus flower and feathers on his head, his inlaid eyes, and if you look closely you can also see traces of gold foil on the belt of his kilt.</p> |
| A445 | <p>Horse and rider figurines such as this one were popular votive offerings in sixth-century BCE Cyprus. The two horses and small wheel below the rider's body identify the group as a biga, or a two-horse chariot, though it may have been part of a quadriga, a group with two riders and four horses.</p> |
| A421 | <p>The goddess Isis had to secretly give birth to and care for her son, Horus, in the marshes of the Nile delta to protect him from his murderous uncle, Set. This statuette depicts a tender moment of Isis nursing the infant Horus, so that one day he may overthrow Set and become king of Egypt like his father, Osiris. The hieroglyphic sign for Isis is a throne; here she not only sits on a throne, but one is reproduced on her head.</p> |
| A28 | <p>The exaggerated proportions and flattened style of this bronze statuette of a female figure are reminiscent of early Iron Age (1000–650 BCE) bronzes from the Lorestan region of western Iran. Along with human figures, these bronzes often depict horned animals and monsters and adorned horse-riding equipment, standards, and pin heads. The identity of the people who created these objects is unclear, but the style seems to derive from Mesopotamian and Elamite bronzes.</p> |
| A303 | <p>Carved in low relief, this block depicts a city god offering the hieroglyphic signs for life and dominion to the king Amenhotep I, whose name is in a cartouche at the bottom center. On the far left are three hieroglyphic signs for religious and royal festivals and part of the sign for the word <em>year</em>. This relief came from a door lintel in a temple dedicated to Amenhotep I at Thebes (present-day Luxor) and is part of a scene depicting the celebration of his jubilee festival.</p> |
| A16 | <p>This frieze would have formed only a small part of a much larger scene from a Hindu temple, dating to the Gupta period based on its style. The central image is of a cow suckling a calf, with her head turned back to lick and clean the calf while it nurses. On the left side is an image of the youthful god Krishna, whose uplifted right arm holds an entire mountain, which rests above the scene. This depicts a moment from a Hindu story in which Krishna lifts Mount Govardhana on the tip of his finger to shelter the villagers and livestock of Braj from torrential rains sent by the wrathful god Indra.</p> |
| A11 | <p>The Navajo began to flourish as silversmiths in the 1880s, partly because many tribe members became employed by the railroad, which paid in silver. This necklace features 12 squash blossoms on a strand of fluted beads and a crescent-shaped <em>názhah</em> (central pendant) adorned with three turquoise stones. Look closely: the <em>názah</em> is stamped with six feathered arrows.</p> |
| A447 | <p>In the second half of the fifth century BCE, Athenian artisans began producing a new type of vase called a white-ground lekythos. These vases held perfumed oil, and mourners used them during funerary rituals and left them at tombs in honor of the deceased. Many lekythoi depict scenes of mourners visiting a gravesite, creating a somber link between the object's decoration and its original function. Here, the younger figure on the right may represent the deceased, while the older man on the left is a grieving family member.</p> |
| A8 | <p>This fragmentary sculpture was probably made in the first or second century CE and most likely represents Venus, the Roman goddess of love. The head tilts to the side, and the hair is arranged in a bow—a style borrowed from the famed ancient Greek sculpture known as the Aphrodite of Knidos, made in the fourth century BCE by Praxiteles.</p> |
| A66 | <p>At its height, the Roman Empire contained a variety of cultures and religions spread across a vast geographic area. Such diversity can be seen in this statuette, which depicts Venus, the Roman goddess of love, wearing the attributes of the Egyptian goddess of magic and fertility, Isis. The nudity symbolizes Venus's sensuality and recalls the sculpture of classical Greece, while the crown and jewelry emphasize the popularity of the cult of Isis in the first and second centuries CE.</p> |
| A78 | <p>Carved from marble, this fragmentary sculpture of a young woman is similar to fifth- or fourth-century BCE examples from ancient Greece. The distinctive hairstyle, parted down the center and secured with a ribbon known as a fillet, was commonly used in depictions of deities like Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Although this object appears ancient, it was most likely created in the 19th or 20th century.</p> |
| A54 | <p>The identity of this seated female deity, likely dating to the Gupta period, is unclear. She sits with an infant in her lap, with two flying garland bearers above her and two attendant figures on either side of her. She could be the Hindu goddess Parvati, and the infant on her lap could be the elephant-headed god Ganesh. Another possibility is that the sculpture depicts a goddess of the Jain religion, Ambika, with one of her infant sons.</p> |
| A4 | <p>This decorative jar likely dates to 19th- or 20th-century China. It was made from dark stone with handles shaped as elephant heads and rings attached. The body features registers or interlocking chains, rosettes, and vegetal elements. The presence of elephant heads on the jar is not only a sign of prestige but refers to the fact that the Chinese words for "vase" and "elephant" are homonymic with those for "peace" and "signs." Thus the jar illustrates the Chinese proverb tai ping you xiang: (When there is peace, there are signs).</p> |
| A443 | <p>The exaggerated features of this bronze figure may look monstrous, but it probably depicts a bush cow native to modern-day Ghana. It was used by Akan gold merchants as a counterweight on a scale to measure out gold dust. Laura Barnes collected these types of African weights, and this example likely was part of her holdings. She donated most of these objects to the Brooklyn Museum, where they can still be seen today.</p> |
| A70 | <p>Tutu is a protective god who takes the form of a sphinx. He was said to have demons under his control to aid him in defeating dangerous forces. Here Tutu, wearing a royal headdress, is depicted in a striding pose. A notch on the top of his head and his empty eyes indicate places where for inlays and attachments made of other materials. The statuette was likely left at a temple as an offering by someone seeking Tutu's protection.</p> |
| A6 | <p>This small and vividly painted statuette depicts a ba bird, the winged and mobile portion of a dead person's soul. According to ancient Egyptian belief, the ba rested in the mummy at night and then flew out of the tomb during the day, enjoying the realm of the living. This statuette would be placed in a tomb to help keep together the different parts of the soul after death, which was important for the continued existence of the dead in the afterlife.</p> |
| A35 | <p>A bare-chested man greets a nude male figure. On the right we see a boy wearing a tightly bound garment, and to the extreme left are the head and front leg of a horse. In the distance, a temple perches on a rocky outcrop. The Greek inscription found encircling the oval piece of marble is fragmentary, but two names are legible: Thesus and Sosippos, son of Nauarchides. These names and the positions of the figure group are drawn from an ancient Greek object housed at the Louvre in Paris. Our curious version is a modern fabrication.</p> |
| A41 | <p>This fragment of a marble relief depicts the mythological figure Ganymede, identified by his pointed Phrygian cap. Zeus was enamored with the beautiful youth and abducted him to Mount Olympus to serve the gods. In some versions of this myth, Zeus took the form of an eagle to carry Ganymede away; this variant of story is demonstrated here by the eagle feathers visible behind Ganymede. The scale and material of the relief suggest that it is from a Roman sarcophagus, which were often decorated with images from Greek and Roman mythology.</p> |
| BF754 | <p>This battle scene from a Persian <em>Shahnameh</em> manuscript portrays Rostam dressed in his tiger coat and riding his ferocious horse, Rakhsh ("Thunder"). He is challenged by Qanun—a leader of the rival Turanian state—while travelling with Kai Kubad, a future shah. When Qanun's spear penetrates Rostam's armor, Rostam seizes the weapon and spears his opponent, lifting him from the saddle of his horse. Qanun and the two armies (grouped to either side) react with surprise and consternation. The <em>Shahnameh</em>, by Abolqasem Ferdowsi (d. 1020), was a popular epic poem narrating the past of the Persian Empire down to the Islamic conquest; in the text the poet highlights various moral virtues from the past in order to improve the future. Images like this battle scene circulated along with the text in illustrating these virtues, serving as platforms for meditation and imitation. The schematic presentation is typical of production in 16th-century Shiraz, where women and men worked together in family workshops.</p> |
| BF794 | <p>This manuscript leaf comes from a Book of Hours illuminated by the French court painter Jean Bourdichon. It depicts the Presentation of Christ in the Temple of Jerusalem, an event celebrated in the liturgical calendar as Candlemas. Forty days after Jesus's birth, the Virgin Mary kneels before an altar and offers the Christ Child to the priest Simeon. Next to her, Joseph holds a large candle; to the right, the prophetess Anna holds the traditional sacrifice of doves. Books of Hours were prayer books used by those in the upper levels of medieval society, both secular and religious. Two other manuscript leaves on this wall were cut from the same book. This one begins with the Latin sentence "Deus in adjutorium meum intende" (O God, come to my aid).</p> |
| BF751 | <p>This scene depicts the victory of the Persian king Bahram Gur over the Hephthalites (Turkic tribes from central Asia), as recounted in the poem <em>Haft Peykar</em> by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (d. 1209). The <em>Haft Peykar</em> was one of five poems in Nizami's <em>Khamsa</em> ("Quintet"). The poems in these volumes range from moralizing fables to epic romances and were meant to inspire virtuous behavior. The illustrations worked hand-in-hand with the verses. This image, however, seems to be an early 20th-century evocation of earlier Persian illustrations.</p> |
| BF2547 | <p>Maurer lived in France until 1914 and painted his dazzling landscapes mostly in the Champagne region. Here, a salmon-pink path leads up rolling lime-green hills. Wind-tossed trees in the middle ground contrast with the shadowy, looming masses (presumably the canopies of older trees) beyond the hillcrest. Maurer harmonized Cézanne's approach to space with Fauvist explorations of color, seeking to probe the essence of his subject; the land in <em>Hills</em> seems to undulate as a living, breathing entity.</p> |
| A79 | <p>The form of this necklace dates to the 1700s, when Spain colonized what is now the Four Corners region of the United States. Members of Native American tribes—including the Navajo, Zuni, and Pueblo—wore them to display wealth and status. The curved centerpiece of the necklace also accounts for its name. In Navajo this is called a <em>naja</em>, (pronounced naah-djia), which in English means "crescent."</p> |
| A409 | <p>Traces of paint survive on the head of this elite male youth, showing his light reddish-brown skin, short black hair, and black eye makeup. The complete statue would have been placed in the subject's tomb or tomb chapel, where it could receive offerings from his family for his continued existence in the afterlife. The style of the head is representative of the late Old Kingdom period, and while it could be authentic, it is likely an early 20th-century forgery.</p> |
| BF795 | <p>This manuscript leaf comes from a Book of Hours illuminated by the French court painter Jean Bourdichon. It depicts the descent of the Holy Spirit on the fiftieth day after Easter, an event now celebrated on the Christian holiday of Pentecost. The Spirit appears in the form of a dove, amid beams of light and "tongues of fire" (Acts 2:3). Though this event was said to have occurred in Jerusalem, the artist—perhaps to demonstrate his knowledge of emergent classicizing trends in Italian art—seems to have set it in the Pantheon in Rome, which had been rededicated as the church Santa Maria Rotunda in the seventh century CE. The Holy Spirit emerges through the oculus in the building's ceiling; the Virgin Mary is framed by a Roman altar niche. Books of Hours were prayer books used by those in the upper levels of medieval society, both secular and religious. Two other manuscript leaves on this wall were cut from the same book. This one begins with the phrase "Domine labia mea aperies" (Lord, open my mouth).</p> |
| BF755 | <p>Made in Mughal India, this page comes from the 'Gulistan,' a collection of moral tales written by the Persian poet Sa'di. It depicts the crisis when the Qazi of Hamadan, a respected civil judge, shown in yellow, is caught with his young male lover. Despite the angry gestures of the informants at the bottom of the page, the king opted for mercy.</p> |
| BF1045 | <p>This late medieval manuscript miniature shows the dead Christ hanging from the Cross, suspended by three enormous nails that pierce his hands and feet. The skull of Adam, whose sin Christ redeemed, lies broken below the Cross; above is a banner with the letters <em>INRI</em> (the Latin initialism for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews"). A Dominican nun kneels at left. She holds an open codex, which reads "Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine" (Give them eternal rest, Lord). Opposite, two small souls appeal to her and to Christ from the flames of Purgatory; the adjacent inscription in German, "Wir ruffen zu Euch" (Out of the depths [we] have called to you, Lord), comes from Psalm 130. Together, these texts suggest that this page—along with the nearby <em>Christ as Man of Sorrows</em> (BF1044)—came from the Office of the Dead in a breviary, a type of prayer book, used by nuns.</p> |
| A1 | <p>What this statue depicts is difficult to tell. The sculptor may have meant to depict a hippo, but if so, it seems likely that the sculptor had never seen the animal in real life. Its snout is almost piglike, and it is missing its ears. While hippos are associated with the lush riverbanks of the Nile in Egypt, this may be a later Roman, Late Antique, or even 20th-century production. Roman mosaics and paintings often depict hippos as ferocious monsters with exaggerated features, reflecting the fact that most Roman artists had never seen the animals themselves and knew them only from illustrations or written descriptions.</p> |
| A197 | <p>This sculpture created by the Dogon peoples of Mali, in West Africa, is not a portrait of specific individuals. Rather, it represents that culture's concept of an ideal social unit. The male figure has a quiver on his back, showing his identity as protector and provider, while the female figure carries a tiny baby.</p> |
| A123 | <p>This statue's angular and geometric forms reflect the ideals of female beauty held by the Bamana people. Called nyeleni or jonyele, the objects were usually displayed in ceremonies celebrating male initiations into secret Jo societies. After being inducted, the young men would travel the countryside in celebration of the event, performing public dances and displaying these female statues to show their new adult status and eligibility for marriage. </p> |
| A124 | <p>In the Fang culture of equatorial Africa, figurative sculptures were created for an association called the "Bieri," who used them as ritual objects to help attain the goodwill of revered ancestors. Heads like this one, with its elaborate hairstyle and bulbous cranium, were meant as generalized representations of ancestry rather than portraits of specific individuals. Affixed to reliquaries containing ancestral remains, such objects were meant to honor the deceased and guard against evil spirits.</p> |
| A139 | <p>This sculpture, which once topped a ceremonial walking stick, was severed from the shaft after leaving its original owners. The same fare was suffered by similar ancestral heirlooms in the earlier 20th century, possibly because only their figurative portions were valued by European collectors.</p> |
| A157 | <p>Most relatively small single figures depicting an ideal of attractiveness were carved to represent an individual's spouse in the other world--an intensely private use.</p> |
| A110 | <p>This mask expresses the Dan culture's ideal of female beauty. The dark and highly polished surface of the wood, framed in incised lines, provides a luxurious sheen and smoothness that recalls youthful, healthy skin. The full, rounded lips and slitted eyes are also seen as desirable features in Dan society.</p> |
| A144 | <p>This magnificent sculpture, small in size, with a sumptuous satiny patina and the surprising allure of an Egyptian deity, has a rounded head with an exquisitely refined crested coiffure with braids, and a powerfully modeled body, set upon fleshy thighs.</p> |
| A160 | <p>In addition to carving the unusual superstructure, the artist who made the Barnes piece introduced many inventive—even unprecedented—details: no coiffure at all, as if the person depicted was bald—a rarity and a defect in Baule life, and unheard of in Baule art.</p> |
| A130 | <p>Punu sculptors carved <em>olifants</em> (side-blown trumpets) to be sounded during ceremonial occasions. The miniature <em>mukudj</em> mask rendered near the mouthpiece could suggest an association with the Okuyi society, who performed the masks in funerary rites; yet the figurative pair adorning the summit of the horn might allude to initiation in another society or perhaps a familial relationship. The material prestige of ivory would have heightened the solemnity of any ceremony at which this <em>olifant</em> was sounded.</p> |
| A106 | <p>This mask is by one of Africa's greatest named master sculptors, and it may be his absolutely greatest work. In this mask only, at the top of the teardrop head where the Bouafle Master constricts the lines, he releases them again, letting the forms flare outward into a small white cup.</p> |
| A196 | <p>In Buddhism, bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who help others to achieve awakening. This sandstone head belonged to a bodhisattva statue from the cave temples of Tianlongshan, China. Tianlongshan means "Heavenly Dragon Mountain" and consists of 21 cave temples; a Chinese inscription on the back of this head reads, "Cave 17, north side of the east wall, right attendant [to a Buddha]." The bodhisattva's closed eyes and gentle smile convey compassion.</p> |
| A430 | <p>This low-relief image of a kneeling man is an early 20th-century forgery imitating the style of the New Kingdom. Mistakes made by the forger include the exaggerated length and size of the arms, feet, and eyes, which are not typical of Egyptian art. The man wears an elaborate two-layered wig, a jeweled collar, and a flowing linen kilt, and his sagging stomach is characteristic of the late New Kingdom. These types of clothing were expensive and mark this man as a member of the elite in Egyptian society.</p> |
| 01.16.19ab | <p>This small canister features tinplate added to a sheet iron body, painted with bold natural designs. The style of canister, sometimes identified as Toleware, was popular in the United States during the late-18th and 19th centuries. Most tinsmiths produced useful kitchen forms like this canister as well as also trays, breadboxes, and pails. While tinplate was sued across New England and the Mid-Atlantic, Pennsylvania Dutch designs, which featured bold color and decorations, were especially popular.</p> |
| BF422 | <p>Jeanne Hébuterne, Modigliani's last mistress, is recognizable by her auburn hair, blank blue eyes, and swanlike neck. Painted the year the couple spent on the Côte d'Azur, when Hébuterne was pregnant with their daughter, the work's ordered lines and subdued color palette convey a calm repose that contrasts with the couple's turbulent relationship. The profile orientation of this stylized portrait emphasizes the conic shape of Hébuterne's tightly coiffed hair, recalling a type of crown worn by ancient Egyptian kings and deities.</p> |
| BF1199 | <p>Vaudeville was a type of lighthearted entertainment featuring burlesque comedy, song, and dance. Here, a graceful male dancer leaps to a rousing surge of music. While Demuth's subject was associated with early 20th-century America, the dancer's extended pose and the yellow-and-red bursts of color from the stage lights quote the English Romantic artist William Blake's (d. 1827) illustration <em>Albion Rose</em>, giving this performance an almost mystical verve.</p> |
| A67 | <p>When Dr. Barnes purchased this stone head, it came with a label identifying it as "Farnabese." This name likely refers to Pharnabazus II, a ruler in the Persian Empire in the fifth century BCE. Images of Pharnabazus II appear on coins from ancient Greece and Persia and share features with the head at the Barnes, specifically the facial hair, large eyes, and helmet. If this head does depict Pharnabazus II, it is a very rare example of a stone portrait of the figure.</p> |
| A86 | <p>Carved in low relief into this marble fragment is a nude man who holds a scabbard-covered sword in his right hand and wears a cloak draped over his left shoulder. The figure's massive left arm rises awkwardly to his chin as he casts a downward glance. This curious object shares a few similarities with ancient Greek funerary monuments from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Yet, due to its small size and the evidence of recarving, it is possible that it is modern fabrication.</p> |
| A34 | <p>An oinochoe is a type of ancient vessel used to pour wine (<em>oinochoe</em> means "wine-pourer" in ancient Greek). Many examples, including this one, have a distinctive trefoil-shaped spout. Ancient Greek wine was very strong, so it was mixed with water in a large vessel (called a krater). Servers would then dip an oinochoe into the krater before pouring the wine-water mixture into individual cups.</p> |
| BF419 | <p>Founded in 1878 to showcase human progress over time, the Trocadéro museum in Paris housed ethnographic artifacts, many of which originated from colonies in France's expanding empire. On his first visit to the collection in 1907, Picasso was instantly drawn to the wide array of African objects he encountered, framed there as emblems of a primitive past. These included Kota reliquary fragments and Baule and Fang masks that resembled works from present-day Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea on display at the Barnes. This densely striated painting—where a masklike head seemingly floats atop a man's collarbone, the neck all but eliminated—exemplifies Picasso's interest in and appropriation of African material culture, which dominated his practice in 1907.</p> |
| BF549 | <p>The sitter in the present work is likely the sister of Antoinette Arnoud, who posed for Matisse during these years. Matisse is less concerned with expressing the subject's individuality than with conveying a theme of intimacy. He renders the sitter's facial features schematically and emphasizes the constructed nature of the background through bold and abbreviated lines. The diamond pattern on the carpet, the stripes on the tablecloth, and the golden curve of the mirror's frame showcase a variety of lines that add visual interest and dynamism to the composition.</p> |
| A74 | <p>In the second half of the fifth century BCE, Athenian artisans began producing a new type of vase called a white-ground lekythos. These vases held perfumed oil, and mourners used them during funerary rituals and left them at tombs in honor of the deceased. Many lekythoi depict scenes of mourners visiting a gravesite, creating a somber link between the object's decoration and its original function. Here, the figures carry wreaths to leave on a loved one's tomb.</p> |
| A31 | <p>Nude female figurines such as this one were common in the Late Bronze Age of Cyprus and usually feature large hips, a decorated pubic triangle, bare breasts, and a head with a beaked, almost reptilian face. The eyes of this figure were made separately before being attached, and earrings may have hung from the holes in her large ears. These figures were likely inspired by similar Levantine objects, perhaps representations of the goddess Ishtar or another divinity, and adapted to suit Cypriot styles and tastes.</p> |
| 01.34.01 | <p>This <em>ketoh</em> has a flat-top turquoise stone at its center, indicating that it was likely cut by a Native jeweler rather than sourced from Persia. Feather motifs radiate out from the stone to the four corners of the plaque, and the whole design is contained by a stamped inset border. The small arrows stamped at the top right and bottom left, which seem superfluous to the design, may be later additions to make the piece look more "authentic" to non-Native collectors.</p> |
| A341 | <p><em>Ketohs</em> originated as thick bands of leather to protect archers from the snap of their bow strings. By the late 19th century, these wrist cuffs became part of ceremonial dress for Navajo and Pueblo men and often featured metal plates with stamped and hammered designs and turquoise stones. The leather band of this <em>ketoh</em> is fastened with a fluted, cone-shaped button.</p> |
| BF317 | <p>Nancy Ferguson was a member of the Philadelphia Ten, an all-female group of Philadelphia-based artists who exhibited together from 1917 to 1945. A graduate of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Ferguson often captured everyday moments painted <em>en plein air</em>, as in this impressionistic scene of a bustling street in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Albert Barnes purchased this painting for educational purposes, so that his students could compare it with the works of Maurice Prendergast, another American artist who, like Ferguson, favored vivid color and mosaiclike compositions.</p> |
| BF2004 | <p>Throughout his career Bernard painted self-portraits to mark his development as an artist. This work highlights his association with cloisonnism as well as his interactions with the Pont-Aven School painters. As in the works of Gauguin, for instance, Bernard paints patches of flat, solid, and unnatural colors and separates them with black outlines. Moreover, the absence of accurate perspectives and shadows in the composition demonstrates both the influence of Van Gogh and Japanese woodblock prints.</p> |
| BF408 | <p>A painter and professional illustrator, May Wilson Preston studied under Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase at the Arts Students League, in New York, and with James McNeill Whistler, in Paris. She was the first woman to become a member of the Society of Illustrators, and she also lent her talents to the women's suffrage movement, illustrating pro-suffrage postcards, magazines, and books. Although Preston was known predominately for her illustrations, she also produced oil paintings. At the center of this formal composition, a woman is posed in an armchair, her left hand resting on a breakfast tray, while the foreground of the scene is anchored by a colorful still life of fruit arranged in a silver bowl.</p> |
| BF421 | <p><em>Head of a Woman</em> is often invoked as a canonical example of Picasso's simplified and "Africanized" forms. While on some occasions the artist did point to "geometric simplicity" as well as "sublime beauty" as underpinning his interest in African sculpture, on others, he denied any visual influence altogether. Most consistently, he declared his passionate affinity for the power he perceived in African ritual objects: "the masks weren't like other kinds of sculpture," he stated in 1937. "They were magical things." Perhaps Picasso would have connected the qualities that imbue this painting—the densely lathered background, vigorous strokes, and pops of yellow and blue that emerge from lower paint layers—with the vitality of African art.</p> |
| BF375 | <p>The graceful model featured in this portrait was the partner of Modigliani's art dealer, Léopold Zborowski. The artist began with a graphite sketch over the ground layer; his confident, curving lines are visible through the loosely painted fabric. Weave-pattern imprints are also visible to the naked eye, suggesting that the artist applied a textile to the painted surface while it was still soft. Subtle passages of brownish orange, pale yellow, and pink add depth to the creamy white dress.</p> |
| A17 | <p>Navajo people were first introduced to silver jewelry by Catholic missionaries and Spanish conquistadors, and they began to flourish as silversmiths in the 1880s. This necklace is packed with 30 squash blossoms, each with four petals. Its <em>názhah</em> (central pendant) features three gleaming pieces of turquoise, a sacred stone in Navajo culture because of its associations with vitality and good fortune.</p> |
| A56 | <p>This small head of a young girl was carved from a piece of medium-grained marble that might have come from the Greek island of Paros. Despite some evidence of later recarving and repairs, this small sculpture likely originates from the Hellenistic period sometime in the centuries following the death of Alexander the Great.</p> |
| A73 | <p>This warrior figurine is most likely a modern production from the early 20th century, though its form and style imitate a type from sixth century BCE Etruria. The figure wears a leather cuirass, and his helmet has a tall plume and simple cheekpieces. He carries a round shield on the left forearm and a phiale (ceremonial bowl) in his right hand, an unusual attribute more often associated with priests than warriors.</p> |
| A80 | <p>In the second half of the fifth century BCE, Athenian artisans began producing a new type of vase called a white-ground lekythos. These vases held perfumed oil, and mourners used them during funerary rituals and left them at tombs in honor of the deceased. Many lekythoi depict scenes of mourners visiting a gravesite, creating a somber link between the object's decoration and its original function. The visitors on this lekythos bring garlands and wreaths to decorate the tomb, though there is evidence of modern repainting.</p> |
| A14 | <p>Navajo people were introduced to silver jewelry when they encountered Catholic missionaries and Spanish conquistadors. The Navajo themselves began to flourish as silversmiths in the 1880s, when many tribe members were employed by the railroad (which paid in silver) and Native American traders recognized the value of their craftwork. This silver necklace features 12 four-petaled squash blossoms on a strand of globular beads and a crescent-shaped <em>názhah</em> (central pendant) adorned with three round turquoise stones. Turquoise is a sacred stone in Navajo culture because of its connections with vitality and good fortune.</p> |
| A57 | <p>In ancient Greece, calyx-krater vessels were used for mixing wine and were often given as wedding gifts. This piece, appropriately, shows a couple reclining on a bridal bed and turning toward each other in an embrace. Two Erotes (winged gods of love) hover above them; one offers the woman a ribbon. On the back are two male figures holding a substantial wineskin.</p> |
| A82 | <p>This sculpture was carved sometime in the third century CE, during the later years of the Roman Empire. It depicts a woman wearing a large crown, known as a diadem. Her wavy hair is parted in the center and pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her identity is unknown, but she probably represents a female deity. The deeply carved pupils of the sculpture's eyes were created using a drill and are distinctive of art from the later Roman Empire.</p> |
| A410 | <p>This low relief fragment of a sitting woman is a modern production from the late 19th or early 20th century. She wears a flowing and transparent linen dress and a diadem with a lotus flower, and she holds three additional lotus flowers. Her hair is painted blue, unheard of in Egyptian art, and in the top left there is a cartouche of the 25th-dynasty king Taharka, from Nubia, Sudan. However, the style is completely out of place for the reign of this king, marking this as a forgery.</p> |
| A75 | <p>This finely made bronze statuette depicts the god Apis, who took the form of a bull and was associated with regeneration and renewal. His divinity is expressed by the sun disk between his horns, the winged goddesses on his back, and his elaborate blanket and collar, which feature small tassels and woven patterns. Remains of a hieroglyphic inscription can also be seen on the base, including his name. This statute would have been left as an offering at a temple by a person seeking the favor of the god.</p> |
| A413 | <p>Triad sculptures such as this were used to express the family relationships between gods, goddesses, and kings. This triad seems to depict the god of the dead, Osiris, in the middle, with his wife, Isis, on the right and their son, Horus, on the left. Inscriptions run in two vertical columns in between the figures, with two kneeling figures at the base. X-ray imaging has revealed that part of this relief, from the heads of the figures upward, are 20th-century plaster restorations; the influence of Art Deco is visible in their faces.</p> |
| BF947 | <p>Self-taught artist John Kane took up painting relatively late in life. A Scottish immigrant who had previously worked as a day laborer, Kane often depicted cheerful scenes of rural life in his canvases. A quaint farmhouse, surrounded by evenly planted flowers and vegetables, anchors the composition of this verdant landscape. In the foreground a farmer carries pails on a shoulder yoke while, in the background, laborers pitch hay into a cart amid rolling green hills. In a letter from 1934, Albert Barnes describes his difficulty in placing this painting "harmoniously" in an ensemble with other works, because of its color scheme. He was eventually led to put it over a door, where it hangs today.</p> |
| BF415 | <p>The Ukrainian painter Alexis Gritchenko launched his career in 1910s Moscow, where his relationships with collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov afforded him simultaneous intimacy with French modernism and Orthodox icon painting. In 1919, following the Russian Revolution, Gritchenko fled to the Mediterranean, where he painted a series of historical cities. Positioned on a steep hill near ancient Sparta, Mistra (Mystras) was originally a Frankish Crusader and later became one of the most important cities of the Late Byzantine Empire. Gritchenko's painting is a site-appropriate fusion of cubism and Orthodox icons, traditions that he believed shared the ability to reveal the inner essence of their subjects.</p> |
| BF263 | <p>Toulouse-Lautrec sought to show the underbelly of glamorous Parisian society. Here the model Carmen Gaudin poses as the prostitute Rosa La Rouge, a seedy and murderous character popularized by the songs of the cabaret performer Aristide Bruant. This painting once hung in Bruant's nightclub, Le Mirliton, in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec paints Carmen with flaming red hair covering her face. Her jaw, which juts out, conveys her surly nature.</p> |
| BF971 | <p>In the cubism of La Fresnaye, objects from the natural world are translated into stylized forms; here, for example, fingers take on the same shape as a pile of books. Painted in 1913, this work seems to sum up the standard gender roles assigned to men and women in traditional representation. With a newspaper open on his lap, the fully clothed man participates in the realm of culture and intellect, while the woman, her naked body in dreamy repose, is all physical sensuality.</p> |
| BF394 | <p>Matisse met the model for this painting, Antoinette Arnoud, in January 1919. She would become his preferred model and an inspiration for much of his work for the next two and a half years. Arnoud, wearing a blue-gray dressing gown edged in purple, sits by an open window reading a book. She leans her elbow on a table laden with objects—a carafe of water, beauty products in front of a mirror—that reinforce the sense of her solitary reverie and contemplation.</p> |
| BF347 | <p>Gritchenko launched his painting career in 1910s Moscow, where his relationships with collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov afforded him simultaneous intimacy with French modernism and Orthodox icon painting. In 1919, following the Russian revolutions, Gritchenko fled to the Mediterranean, where he painted a series of historical sites. <em>Fortified Town</em> shows the Greek city of Mystras, which served as the citadel for Crusader, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Venetian powers. Gritchenko's painting is a site-appropriate fusion of cubism, Orthodox icons, and Italian Renaissance painting, traditions that he believed shared the ability to reveal the inner essence of their subjects.</p> |
| BF350 | <p>This domestic interior scene depicts Bonnard's companion Marthe de Méligny sitting at the couple's dining-room table in Paris. She seems to be telling their dog to sit, as it perhaps smells the remnants of a meal or snack on the table. Marthe is dressed for cool weather, with a soft brown hat, scarf, and a voluminous black-and-white dress or housecoat. Behind her Bonnard has depicted two folding screens of his own design, which seem to interact with the main scene and blur the boundary between foreground and background.</p> |
| BF266 | <p>As a child in the coastal city of Volos, Greece, de Chirico was fascinated by beachside changing-cabins, specifically as the sites of adults' transformation from a "heroic" clothed mode into a state of vulnerable, primordial nudity. Here, a man in a business suit gazes toward the horizon as two nude figures wade in a stream of parquet-patterned water connecting three of de Chirico's "mysterious" cabins. De Chirico believed existence to be a transitory puzzle; the partially obscured figures here, moving amid their static surroundings, speak to this perspective.</p> |
| BF238 | <p>Afro Basaldella was an Italian painter active mainly in Venice and Rome. Here, he employed a semiabstract, openwork version of cubism to depict the moment when Saint Martin (d. 397)—a Roman knight who became the celebrated bishop of Tours—sliced his cloak in two to share it with a beggar. Afro's lucidly geometric composition imagines a rapprochement between classicism and modernism while speaking to his interest in metaphysics and inner experience. Two of the works with which this painting is displayed in the Barnes Foundation attest to two of Afro's most important inspirations during the late 1940s: the paintings of Paul Klee and the sculptures of his brother Mirko.</p> |
| BF2520 | <p>Klee translates a village in a rocky landscape into multicolored polygonal shapes separated by black lines. Created at the end of Klee's tenure at the Bauhaus, the famous German design school that had sought to unite architecture, fine arts, and crafts, Village among Rocks can be interpreted as a totalizing work of painting, stained glass, and architectonics. Klee also drew upon Gestalt psychology to construct the expanding and contracting surfaces of this scene in order to guide the viewer's engagement.</p> |
| BF376 | <p>In his street scenes, landscapes, and interiors, Robert Lotiron focused on the humble rituals of daily life. Much like Cézanne, Lotiron perceived a certain geometry in everyday subjects, and translated his figures and objects into simplified shapes and forms. Muted in color, this painting of two men playing a game of backgammon has a stillness to it—a slowness—that perhaps speaks to the quiet rhythms of daily life.</p> |
| A140 | <p>The rulers of the Mossi people used figures such as this, called a <em>ninana</em> (pl. <em>ninande</em>), to validate their political power. A <em>Ninana</em> served as a symbol of office while a ruler was living and a memorial after their death. During the period in which this object was made, male rulers' <em>ninande</em> often represented females. This figure shows a standing female with scarification across her torso and banding on her neck and arms. The wear around her waist and feet show where she would have been adorned with strands of beads when ceremonially displayed to the public each year.</p> |
| A145 | <p>This nude statuette of a man stands with his eyes closed and hands resting on his thighs. He wears an intricate hairstyle, and scarification beautifies his face, neck, chest, and sides. Figurative statues of the Baule people are collectively called <em>waka snan</em> ("people of wood") and represent either nature spirits (<em>asie usu</em>) or "spirit spouses" (<em>blolo bian</em>), individuals' counterparts in the spiritual world. The high finish and polish of this statuette suggest that it shows a <em>blolo bian</em>, who could be jealous of their human partner's spouse and demand to be manifested as beautiful statues.</p> |
| A154 | <p>A wood-and-copper effigy handle in the form of a masked human head surmounts the iron bell of this tall, slender gong. For the Tsogo people of Gabon, gongs and harps are associated with initiation rites into the Bwiti male professional association. The overarching metaphor of these masquerade rituals was that of creation: participants would undergo a symbolic death, encounter ancestral spirits, and be reborn as adepts in the association's tradition of learning. The striking of gongs represented a man's heartbeat, and the harp music the animating breath of the Supreme Creator.</p> |
| A156 | <p>Brightly painted masks of this type were created throughout large areas of the Western Sudan region in precolonial times; this one may have come from the city of Kong in modern Côte d'Ivoire. Its intricate geometric designs were painted from locally produced pigments of indigo and red. The mask was likely used for <em>kurubi</em> dances performed during Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar), on occasions when angels were expected to descend to Earth.</p> |
| A150 | <p>In 1922 and 1923, Dr. Albert C. Barnes purchased seven Fang sculptures from Parisian gallery owner Paul Guillaume. They are among a vast corpus of biyema-byeri, ancestor figures used in Bveri rites, so emblematic of this style of African art.</p> |
| A136 | <p>This Baule sculpture of a female figure likely represents a nature spirit (<em>asie usu</em>). As a nature spirit she has features that signify her beauty, such as the scarification patterns on her skin. The slight asymmetry found in the patterns and the position and curvature of her legs is a distinctive Baule feature. The encrusted white patina on some section of the surface indicates that the object was used in ritual practices.</p> |
| A132 | <p>This simple mask was never intended to be worn but rather was displayed or carried by a Lega man as a symbol of status. Representing ancestors and handed down through generations, the masks were associated with initiates in a hierarchical organization called Bwami, which instilled moral values and permeated much of Lega society. </p> |
| A138 | <p>This Teke reliquary shaped like a male figure is made entirely of wood, except for the metal bracelet on the left ankle. The figure's trunk is an octagonal box; a Teke ritual specialist would have activated the object by filling the box with symbolic medicines prepared with sacred earth taken from the grave of a male ancestor. This reliquary and others like it thereby channeled a healing entity called <em>buti</em>, identified with the specific ancestors whom they embodied. The Teke people began to create this genre of power objects as they were losing their territories to European colonization.</p> |
| A133 | <p>This small pendant is carved in the shape of a triangular mask with heavy lidded eyes and an elaborate hairstyle. Called ikhokho, these pendants are miniature versions of masks, called mbuya, that represented spirits or ancestors and were worn by the Pende peoples in dance ceremonies. This pendant could have been carried as a form of magical protection, and its discoloration is probably a result of wear and tear.</p> |
| A135 | <p>Possibly a representation of an ancestor or spirit, this naturalistic carving of a Baule man would have been part of a full-figure statuette. The raised geometric patterns on the skin likely represent scarification, and the statuette was at least partially painted, as there are traces of white pigment in the hair plaits. A staple at the back of the head documents repair in the past.</p> |
| A128 | <p>The face of this mask represents an ideal of female beauty that can be found in a number of Dan "running masks" in the collection. They tend to have small circular eyes, large full lips, and a finely polished surface that reflects light and emphasizes the rich, dark colors of the wood. The holes along the edges of this example likely would have held attachments made of cloth and shell for representing hair and providing movement and sound when the mask was worn. </p> |
| A127 | <p>A series of repeating, balanced forms constitute this <em>nkpasopi</em> (woman of wood). The figure's strength and poise reflect its perceived ability to manifest the power of the invisible spiritual beings who animated a diviner's therapeutic practice. Each <em>nkpasopi</em> had a personal name, and the statue would have offered its owners a tactile as well as visual experience.</p> |
| A117 | <p>This Baule statue of a man likely represents an "otherworldly" mate, a supernatural counterpart to a Baule woman. The Baule believed that everyone had a supernatural spouse of the opposite sex, and when an individual faced difficulty in life it was likely due to this mate being unhappy. In order to appease them, statues of the mate were made to celebrate their wondrous beauty. The patterns and stylized features of the statue reflect Baule body culture and concepts of beauty.</p> |
| 01.22.43 | <p>Designed to catch the wind in its tail feathers, this iron rooster originally sat atop a church steeple in the Burgundy region of France. In certain contexts, the rooster functions as a symbol of the French nation: the Latin word for the animal, <em>gallus</em>, recalls the ancient Roman name, Gaul, for the territory of modern France. A blacksmith in Burgundy made the piece, and it is perhaps the rarest object in the Barnes's metalwork collection.</p> |
| BF2073 | <p>The subject of Hugh Mesibov's <em>Byzantine Figure</em> stands in front of a yellow door, evoking Orthodox icons of saints on gilded panels. Further, the scene is fractured into segments of color that glow like a mosaic or stained glass on the black paper. Mesibov indeed drew inspiration from older traditions of art as a way of exploring surrealism, but Dr. Barnes seems to have given the painting its title. He wrote to Mesibov in 1947: "In your exhibit [at the Chinese Gallery in New York] you had a small crayon somewhat in the Byzantine style. I wish you would send me that."</p> |
| A141 | <p>The work is an example of a portrait mask, or Mblo, an artistic genre considered by some Baule to be the preeminent form of sculpture. Although this type of mask is created to honor a known individual, its imagery is idealized. The balanced composition, rounded contours indicate harmony and refinement.</p> |
| A189 | <p>In the Baule culture, face masks like this one were relatively plentiful. Such objects were not considered sacred but were instead used for performances and village festivals. For this reason, they were easily seen and acquired by European collectors. </p> |
| BF650 | <p>In 1921, Albert Barnes bought a batch of watercolors by Paul Cézanne from Leo Stein (Gertrude Stein's brother), including this one showing the Chaîne de l'Etoile mountain range in the South of France. During recent treatment, conservators discovered a previously unknown watercolor by the artist—an unfinished sketch of trees—on the back. Cézanne often worked this way, using both sides of the pages in his sketchbooks as he walked the landscape around Aix-en-Provence.</p> |
| BF708 | <p>Demuth painted a pathbreaking series of cubist-inspired landscapes during a trip to Bermuda in 1916–17. In <em>Bermuda: Houses</em>, stacked geometric forms taper to a structure with a triangular roof and an arched doorway flanked by two windows. A delicate, wavy line and a vibrant patch of blue indicate the sea and sky. The display of this painting above Cézanne's watercolor <em>Mont Sainte-Victoire</em> acknowledges the French artist's profound impact on Demuth.</p> |
| A426 | <p>Mirko, an Italian artist, created this abstract bronze sculpture in Rome; Dr. Barnes purchased it at an exhibition in New York during the spring of 1950. The object is composed of three vertical bars with geometric and organic shapes attached to each other by crossbars. Mirko based his technique on the Renaissance tradition of the artist-craftsman, but in a modern spirit. Dr. Barnes placed the sculpture beneath a painting by Afro, the artist's brother.</p> |
| BF649 | <p>Demuth visited Bermuda in 1916–17, and while there he painted a breakthrough series of landscapes inspired by cubism and the works of Cézanne. The formidable subject of <em>Bermuda: Tree</em> has two main trunks and multiple gnarled boughs, from which soft and light new branches grow. The tree's limbs seem to fracture the surrounding space into a network of interpenetrating planes.</p> |
| BF647 | <p>Two tall trees with wavy trunks screen a group of houses, suggested by overlapping red and black rectangles. The compressed setting reads as a series of receding registers and probably captures a view from a hotel on Saint George's Island, Bermuda. Demuth stayed there with his friend Marsden Hartley after both had worked in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they experimented with cubism. The combination, as here, of hard geometric forms with curved organic shapes is perhaps what prompted Dr. Barnes to compare Demuth's landscapes to an 18th-century Chinese portrait of an abbot on silk from his collection (BF86).</p> |
| BF634 | <p><em>Raimondo</em> comes from a period in Modigliani's career when he was exploring a variety of techniques and styles. At this time, he was sensitive to the influence of Cubism—evident here in the decomposition of the background and vertical splitting of the man's face into two asymmetrical halves. The artist's dynamic pencil marks range from the fine, delicate strokes on the figure's cheek to the broad, darker marks behind his neck, imparting variances in value and texture. The title likely refers to Dr. Raymond Barrieu (1889–1969), whom Modigliani depicted in another portrait from 1916.</p> |
| A162 | <p>The life-like dimensions of the figure represented in this work, and the regular pattern of scarification on its face, show ways in which Baule representation changed in the 20th-century. In earlier works, the size of the head would be larger, the legs rather shorter. It is difficult to reconstruct the meaning of Baule figures outside of their original context, but larger figures were often made for <em>komyen</em> (spirit mediums), who were obliged to create a shrine to the <em>asye usu</em> (nature spirits) that possessed them. However, rather than form any spiritual function, many 20th-century figures were made in response to a demand from European collectors.</p> |
| 2001.25.51 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Horses were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. The person who dedicated this horse figurine may have chosen it to communicate their wealth or status. With its sharp ears and notched nose, this figurine is in the Laconian style.</p> |
| 2001.25.53 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Horses were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. The person who dedicated this horse figurine may have chosen it to communicate their wealth or status.</p> |
| 2001.25.52 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Cows and bulls were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. Examples of bulls similar to this one have been found at Olympia and other ancient Greek sanctuaries.</p> |
| 2001.25.54 | <p>Hundreds of small bronze horses, cows, and bulls have been found at sites such as the Sanctuary to Zeus at Olympia, where visitors would have dedicated them as gifts to the gods. Cows and bulls were popular subjects in Greek art in the Geometric Period and were associated with the elite. Examples of bulls similar to this one have been found at Olympia and other ancient Greek sanctuaries.</p> |
| 01.01.08 | <p>This stately Magnavox turntable contains a record player in its middle drawer and a radio in its right cabinet. Made of mahogany with brass fittings, it is decorated with fluted pilasters at the corners and a wave motif along the top. Dr. Barnes was passionate about music—from classical symphonies and African American spirituals to daring modernist compositions. Using this Magnavox, he frequently incorporated music into his teaching about visual art, guiding his students to seek analogies between individual paintings and musical pieces.</p> |
| BF949 | <p><em>The Henriot Family</em> has been temporarily removed from display in the Main Gallery for technical study and conservation treatment. Funding for the conservation of this artwork was generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project. Daytrips to the countryside around Paris became a popular form of leisure during the late 19th century. Renoir alludes to this kind of activity here, presenting three well-dressed figures relaxing near a tree. The woman in the foreground is Henriette Henriot, one of Renoir's favorite models during the 1870s. At left is the artist's brother, Edmond Renoir. As with so many of Renoir's canvases from the impressionist period, the handling of paint is bold and experimental, with thinly painted passages interrupted by jarring splotches of impasto.</p> |
| BF534 | <p>Peasants were a popular subject for French artists in the late 19th century. Many created romanticized depictions in which rosy-cheeked figures labor in fields saturated with golden light. Cézanne avoided such sentimentality in this painting. The subject is a gardener who worked on his father's estate outside Aix-en-Provence, where Cézanne lived and worked for many years. Cézanne rhymes nature with the gardener's body: the bush behind him forms a perfect oval frame, and the tree branches at right bend to follow his contours.</p> |
| BF65 | <p>This painting and <em>Girl with Basket of Fish</em> form an allegory of the fecundity of nature. The girl carrying the basket of fish, or the fruits of the sea, is set against a landscape reminiscent of the cliffs of Normandy in northern France, where Renoir painted frequently in the 1880s. Her companion with the oranges, by contrast, perhaps has the Bay of Naples behind her, a site Renoir visited in 1881. These paintings are a version of a pair that decorated the apartment of Renoir's dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.</p> |
| BF21 | <p>The tactile fuzziness, plumpness, and ripened hues of Cézanne's peaches satisfy the eye despite the "unfinished" state of the painting. Part of a trio of partially completed still lifes by Cézanne in the collection, <em>Four Peaches on a Plate</em> is the most fully realized. This style of brushwork and the motif of peaches are both relatively rare in this late period of the artist's career. In its close attention to the surface details and the form of the fruit, the canvas recalls his earliest still lifes, from the 1860s. The cropped view and precarious angle of the plate entice the viewer to reach for a fruit.</p> |
| BF709 | <p>Of the 181 works in the collection by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Albert Barnes identified this one as his favorite. The canvas dates from Renoir's late period, when he focused on timeless Arcadian themes instead of the contemporary urban and suburban motifs of his earlier impressionist works. In a 1924 letter Dr. Barnes wrote that the painting represents "the summation of [Renoir's] powers."</p> |
| BF12 | <p>Toilette scenes, which typically depict women in the process of bathing, fixing hair, powdering, and dressing, was a popular subject for progressive and academic painters alike in the late 19th century. Indeed, it was a perfect subject for avant-garde artists committed to depicting the female nude in a realistic setting, and many of Cézanne's peers, such as Degas, Manet, Morisot, Seurat, and Toulouse Lautrec, created versions of the scene. It was perhaps the genre's popularity that dissuaded from Cézanne from engaging with this motif, as this is one of the few toilette scenes he produced. Here, the artist sets his nude against rumpled drapery with pronounced facets.</p> |
| A185 | <p>The scarification patterns on the belly and thighs reflect the high status of this figure, who probably represents an honored ancestor in the Luba culture. Wooden stools like this one were made for exclusive use by Luba chiefs and kings.</p> |
| BF656 | <p>Demuth studied cubist theory in Paris and at the "Arensberg Salon" in New York, but he discovered his own idiom during a trip to Bermuda in 1916–17. Here, he analyzes a stairway from multiple angles and through several frames. An overall compositional unity emerges through the compression of space and intersection of planes.</p> |
| BF141 | <p>Cézanne painted at least 29 portraits of his wife, Marie-Hortense Fiquet. Here she appears in a green upholstered chair with her forearm resting on the chair's elongated arm. Although she is fashionably dressed, Marie-Hortense leans at a seemingly uncomfortable angle and presents a stern expression to the viewer. The thrust-out lower lip and blank stare contrast with her whimsical hat; its transparent brim reveals her forehead underneath. With its warped perspective and dour-looking sitter, Cézanne's canvas disrupts the conventions of female portraiture.</p> |
| BF648 | <p>Demuth visited Bermuda in 1916–17, and while there he painted a breakthrough series of landscapes inspired by cubism and the works of Cézanne. In <em>Rooftop through Trees</em>, two tree boughs form an almond-shaped frame for a vista of blocky buildings. The buildings' rigid forms are offset by the trees' gentle curves—the smaller branches are rendered so lightly as to appear ghostly.</p> |
| BF167 | <p>Renoir relished painting hats. Many of the hats featured in his paintings were selected by the artist himself from Parisian millineries. Here, the sitter wears a fashionable red dress with puffed sleeves and a broad-brimmed straw hat arranged with abundant flowers and ribbon. The swirling foliage of the background contrasts with the strong black outline of the subject's collar.</p> |
| BF53 | <p>This painting and <em>Girl with Basket of Oranges</em> form an allegory of the fecundity of nature. The girl carrying the basket of fish, or the fruits of the sea, is set against a landscape reminiscent of the cliffs of Normandy in northern France, where Renoir often painted in the 1880s. Her companion with the oranges, by contrast, perhaps has the Bay of Naples behind her, a site Renoir visited in 1881. These paintings are a version of a pair that decorated the apartment of Renoir's dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.</p> |
| BF101 | <p>Cézanne's depictions of male bathers from the 1890s may evoke the artist's memories from his youth of swimming with friends in the Provencal countryside. These bathers, outlined in blue and with flecks of coral flesh tones, exemplify the brighter palette of this era as compared with the artist's earthier green-and-ocher bather paintings from the 1870s. The figures here are also more lithesome than his stocky early bathers; they hew more closely to the proportions of the ancient Greek sculptures that inspired their poses.</p> |
| BF20 | <p>While we know the identity of the subject—he was a professional model, Michelangelo de Rosa, who posed for Cézanne several times—the artist didn't intend this as a portrait in the traditional sense. Rather, the painting is perhaps better understood as a study in human psychology and emotion. Shoulders slumped, mouth turned down, eyes staring into the distance, the boy seems a picture of melancholy.</p> |
| BF140 | <p>Picasso spent the summer of 1906 living in Gósol, a remote town in the Pyrenees Mountains outside of Barcelona. This enormous canvas, begun that summer and later finished in Paris, depicts two barefoot villagers on their way to the market to sell flowers. The picture's spatial ambiguity, where forms begin to overlap and space becomes difficult to read—notice how the man's thighs and bull's body seem to blend together—hints at the cubist style Picasso would begin developing in 1907.</p> |
| 2001.25.50a,b,c | <p>When Matisse traveled to the US in 1930, he made a special trip to the Barnes Foundation since the collection held so many of his works. During his visit, Albert Barnes asked the artist to create a massive painting to fill the lunettes of his gallery. Matisse chose the subject of dancing figures and set to work in a specially rented warehouse in Nice, France. The work is on three separate canvases; look carefully and you can see where their edges meet. It is the only site-specific work in the collection.</p> |
| BF264 | <p>Henri Matisse painted this tribesman from the Rif Mountains of northern Morocco during a trip to the region in 1912. Rendered with bold colors and on a monumental scale, the figure fills the canvas from top to bottom and confronts the viewer directly. Morocco was under French rule at the time of Matisse's visit. Like so many other works produced during the colonial period, this one reflects the European fascination with the "exoticism" of faraway lands.</p> |
| BF6 | <p>This painting represents the rolling countryside behind the cliffs at Pourville, a small seaside resort town in northern France. Renoir depicted this little hamlet in several canvases from 1879. As in many of his landscapes of the 1870s, Renoir chose a very unconventional viewpoint. The viewer is seemingly located deep among the foreground bushes, which frame the right margin but also run across the entire foreground, denying us any clear foothold in the space depicted.</p> |
| BF807 | <p>This painting is likely a fragment of (or perhaps a study for) a larger painting of the Last Supper. Although the figures are unnamed, we can speculate on their identities by looking at other Renaissance examples of the Last Supper, such as the famous fresco by Leonard da Vinci in Milan. The figures here might be Saint Peter on the right (his white beard and hair are similar to other representations), and Saint Andrew to the left.</p> |
| BF1197 | <p>Featuring one of Daumier's favorite subjects, this painting showcases the artist's skill at capturing the realities of 19th-century Paris. The minimal background heightens the interactions between the two sitting figures. Daumier emphasizes his subjects' facial features through the simplicity of the composition and the harsh yet careful use of highlights and shadows.</p> |
| BF816 | <p>Attributed to the Venetian artist Bonifazio de' Pitati, this painting depicts two bearded men who are thought to be either prophets or philosophers. The figures appear in close-up and before an ambiguous dark background, providing little information for the viewer. The men seem to gaze at something outside the frame, which suggests that this small canvas is either a fragment from a larger composition or a study for a larger work.</p> |
| BF190 | <p>Throughout his career, Cézanne explored color and line by painting compositions of fruit and flowers. Here, the cool green of the pear—which sits uneasily on a bright white plate—contrasts with the ruddy-colored apples. The skins of the fruits range from red to yellow, while the shadows they cast are largely blue. Cézanne painted these works in his studio, and the modest table here appears in multiple paintings.</p> |
| BF75 | <p>Recognized primarily for his career as a caricaturist, Daumier often employed melodramatic body language and facial expressions to create his haunting pictures. This painting references a play by Molière of the same name and depicts the main character, Argan, on the right. A physician stands by his side, grabbing his arm while examining his supposedly deteriorating condition. One of several works by the artist that were inspired by Molière, it captures the humor and pathos seen in the play.</p> |
| BF895 | <p>Corot regularly used members of his family as models, and the four daughters of his sister Annette-Octavie were frequent subjects. He painted a portrait of each of his nieces in her 16th year and made copies for their mother. Each is depicted in half-light, as here, in an interior setting that was likely the artist's studio. A dark background serves to highlight the bright points of Blanche's pale face, white lace collar, and the delicate reflections on the glass vessel.</p> |
| BF583 | <p>This work is on display in the exhibition <em>Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets</em> in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. In the last half of the 19th century, impressionist and post-impressionist artists were drawn to the Paris neighborhood of Asnières and its increasingly industrial character. Monet painted laborers unloading a coal barge, while Seurat depicted workers bathing in the Seine. Here Rousseau emphasizes not the human presence of the riverside neighborhood, but rather its large trees with their elongated trunks, which tower above the small figures in silhouette moving along walkway. The unattended sailboats in the river seem to have the scale of toys.</p> |
| BF36 | <p>This picture is unusual in Cézanne's oeuvre for its specific literary subject matter. It represents the story from Ovid's <em>Metamorphoses</em> in which Zeus disguises himself as a swan to seduce Leda, the daughter of King Thestius. This is certainly one of the artist's more overtly sensual paintings: Leda displays herself for the viewer, hip curving dramatically and cheeks flushed, while the swan's beak wraps around her wrist as if taking possession of her. Cézanne made two drawings in preparation for the painting, one of which shows the figure holding a champagne flute.</p> |
| BF564 | <p>For much of the 1890s, Paul Cézanne lived at his father's estate in Aix-en-Provence, where he made paintings of the local landscape and the people who worked on the property. Here, Cézanne shows a group of farmhands enjoying a game of cards—one of five canvases he devoted to the subject. In this one, the largest and most ambitious of the series, Cézanne gives these humble figures an imposing presence, depicting them on a scale usually reserved for grander subjects like history or mythology.</p> |
| BF811 | <p>In this scene set inside the artist's studio, Seurat depicts models posing in front of <em>A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884</em> (1884–86; Art Institute of Chicago), his most famous pointillist painting. Informed by scientific theories of light, color, and optics, pointillism was dismissed by many critics at the time for being too cold and methodical—a style that could never be applied to noble subjects like the nude. Here, Seurat seems to offer his response, presenting life-size bodies from multiple angles.</p> |
| BF189 | <p>Cézanne painted individual portraits of his employees on his country estate, and the poses captured in these works often relate to his ambitious group of genre paintings. <em>The Drinker</em> is frequently subsumed within the broader <em>Card Players</em> thematic, even though it is more than a preparatory study and is an accomplished portrait in its own right. Each laborer on Cézanne's estate, when chosen to become a model, switched from one form of employment to another. Even when his models are shown posing, Cézanne took pains to emphasize labor versus rest. Here, the subject sits next to a bottle of wine, but there is no glass, leaving him unable to savor the fruits of his labor.</p> |
| BF359 | <p>Prendergast depicts a panoramic scene of Revere Beach, Massachusetts, setting crowds of brightly dressed figures (including two children riding donkeys or mules) against the serene waters of the bay. A trailblazer of American modernism, Prendergast presents the scene as a pattern of sunny colors, uniting the clouds, figures, and sand with a glittery stippling. His many pictures of crowds by the sea blended sources from medieval mosaics to French neoimpressionism and reflected the increased leisure time afforded to working Americans as a result of recent labor reforms.</p> |
| BF39 | <p>A bonbonnière is a small vessel for sweets. Renoir's is decorated with a floral motif and seems to melt into the blue, purple, and white whirls that denote the tablecloth and background. To the left are two oranges and two lemons, highlighted with bright impasto yellow. The thinly painted, iridescent background bends around the fruits and bonbonnière.</p> |
| BF120 | <p>Although the title of this painting references the woman's high-collared cape, the main subject of the work is her spectacular hat, decked with flowers, ribbons, and ruffles. The large swirls of paint defining lush petals, folds of fabric, and scalloped edges are brushed on thickly, while the cape is thinly painted in subdued colors. Renoir enjoyed painting women in extravagant hats as a pretext for exploring color and brushwork.</p> |
| BF299 | <p>Renoir loved to paint his models wearing hats and bonnets. "He put heaps of them on my head," one model reported. "He took me to the milliners' shops; he never ceased buying lots of hats." Renoir painted these accessories continually, even after his dealer, Durand-Ruel, advised him that hats were going out of fashion and that his works might sell better if he didn't include them. In this canvas, the hat, rather than the woman wearing it, seems to be the focus of attention.</p> |
| BF23 | <p>With its dynamic composition and lively colors, this still life seems anything but still. Foreground and background merge, and objects jostle for space, as drapery obscures the central motif. Ginger jars were popular home decorations in 19th-century Europe, and—like this one—they tended to feature shades of blue. Cézanne included the objects in several paintings, often alongside a similar selection of fruit.</p> |
| BF819 | <p>Renoir presents his family in the garden of their residence in Paris. At center Renoir's wife, Aline Charigot Renoir, wears a colorful hat and blouse. Renoir's oldest son, Pierre, holds his mother's arm while Jean, the artist's second son, toddles in the foreground; Jean is gently supported by Gabrielle Renard, the family's nursemaid and one of Renoir's favorite models. The girl is probably a neighbor or friend. Renoir kept this painting his whole life; Dr. Barnes purchased it from one of the Renoir sons in 1927.</p> |
| BF701 | <p>In this sunny tableau of summertime leisure on the shore of Bellport, Long Island, bands of young women and men swim, sail, and slide and dive from a floating raft. Glackens's lively strokes of high-keyed colors, especially in the iridescent seawater, offer an American variation on bathing scenes by French modernists such as Monet and Renoir. Albert Barnes applauded his friend Glackens's galvanization of American art and believed that the artist's brilliant use of color helped viewers to "see life with a reality that our unaided selves never would have experienced."</p> |
| BF934 | <p>The bathers theme originated in the Renaissance and traditionally showed idealized female bodies in total harmony with nature. Yet Cézanne disturbs this easy relationship here and in his other works on the subject. In this canvas, thick with paint, space is hard to read, and the landscape —note the dead tree branches and ominous clouds—seems harsh and threatening. While he derived many of the figures' poses from classical statuary, Cézanne overturns tradition as soon as he references it: bodies are deliberately distorted, with obliterated faces, truncated limbs, and uneven flesh.</p> |
| BF149 | <p>William Glackens spent the summer of 1910 in Chester, Nova Scotia, painting the scenery and daily life around him. Here he captures the pleasures of summertime leisure. As one figure floats across the water on his back, bright white paint describing the spray from his foot, four women cool off in the center; a boy teeters in a boat while another runs along the dock. Fashionably dressed women chat by the waterfront while a nursemaid accompanies a small child into the bathhouse. Wet bathing clothes hang from a laundry line stretching across the middle ground. The inclusion of such mundane details helped Glackens build a convincingly realistic scene. The Bathing Hour was exhibited at the famous Armory Show in New York in 1913. Barnes purchased it directly from Glackens, his good friend, the following year.</p> |
| BF1186 | <p><em>Railroad Cut</em> is an oil study for the finished painting <em>Railroad Cut with Mont Sainte-Victoire</em> (1870, now in Munich). It represents land near Aix-en-Provence sectioned to accommodate railway tracks linking Aix with Rognac; between the banks of earth, a bright red railroad signal is juxtaposed with the medieval tower of the Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur. <em>Railroad Cut</em> is the first painting in which Cézanne addressed the effects of industrial modernism on the Provençal landscape.</p> |
| BF14 | <p>Renoir painted this canvas years after he had moved away from impressionism, when he was living in the rural countryside of southern France. The painting shows a casually dressed figure stirring a cup of hot chocolate; lost in reverie, slumping forward, she is conveys dreamy inwardness rather than the urban, public sociability seen in so many impressionist pictures. Notice how many colors make up the white tablecloth—purple, green, blue—and how Renoir uses soft, delicate brushstrokes to create the appearance of velvety flesh.</p> |
| BF47 | <p>In 1907, Renoir bought a property in the south of France called Les Collettes, where he lived for the rest of his life. He frequently painted the estate's old farmhouse, usually seen through a grove of olive and orange trees and other verdant plantings. In this small, fluid sketch, Renoir bisects the farmhouse with an orange tree; to the right of the trunk is an arched doorway outlined in white that anchors the composition and pulls the viewer into this sunny Mediterranean scene.</p> |
| BF68 | <p>Renoir painted the female nude obsessively during his later career. He devoted hundreds of canvases to the depiction of bathing figures, presented alone or in groups. Here, as in the vast majority of these paintings, the bather does not acknowledge the presence of the artist or viewer but remains absorbed in her task, heightening the sense of voyeurism. Renoir achieved the effect of the soft and velvety-looking skin by applying liquid-thin paint in short, delicate strokes; this a hallmark of his late works.</p> |
| BF1000 | <p>Renoir painted children consistently throughout his career, winning him much admiration during his own lifetime and in the early decades of the 20th century. "Renoir asserts the dignity of the most fundamental things of life—summer sun, childhood, the beauty of flesh," wrote a critic for the <em>Art Digest</em> in 1935; another praised Renoir's ability to capture "the softness, the fleeting charm of the child." The latter observation holds especially true in this canvas. The pretty sitter, with her beribboned neck and partially exposed shoulder, is on the cusp of adolescence.</p> |
| BF918 | <p>This panel and its pendant show two sets of caryatids, sculpted figures that could serve as structural supports in classical Greek architecture. Posed in symmetrical positions and fitted perfectly into their architectural niches, the figures assume a kind of eternal sculptural presence. Yet Renoir gives their bodies a rosy color that returns them to the realm of living and breathing, and of painting. This blurring of artistic boundaries embodies the theoretical ideas that he had expressed in his early writings.</p> |
| BF919 | <p>This panel and its pendant show two sets of caryatids, sculpted figures that could serve as structural supports in classical Greek architecture. Posed in symmetrical positions and fitted perfectly into their architectural niches, the figures assume a kind of eternal sculptural presence. Yet Renoir gives their bodies a rosy color that returns them to the realm of living and breathing, and of painting. This blurring of artistic boundaries embodies the theoretical ideas that he had expressed in his early writings.</p> |
| BF102 | <p><em>Bowl, Figs, and Apples</em> was among the more than 800 canvases left in Renoir's studio at his death in 1919. The dainty porcelain tureen at center blends into a cluster of fruits so ripe that haloes of color escape the boundaries of their solid forms. This small study was cut from a larger canvas containing several others. The inscription "OVER VICTROLA" on the back, made by Dr. Barnes or one of his assistants, refers to the integration of the painting into its ensemble at the Barnes Foundation.</p> |
| BF2536 | <p>In this early painting by Rouault, a lightly sketched girl gazes toward the viewer and smiles. The artist was striving to imitate the elegance and spontaneity of East Asian brush painting, specifically the intimate scenes dominated by lyrical blues and glowing yellows. Purchased in 1949, <em>Little Girl in Blue</em> was among Dr. Barnes's last acquisitions. Its display in Room 20 allows visitors to compare the graphic styles of modern artists with each other as well as with their non-Western influences.</p> |
| BF940 | <p>Rather than depicting a recognizable site or a spectacular view, as had been the tradition in French landscape painting, here Cézanne focused on an ordinary tree next to a road. Trees appear frequently in Cézanne's work, sometimes as framing devices for a view into the distance, but more often as the main subject. Scraggly branches reach across this canvas as distant foliage is abstracted into a screen of broad, flat marks. Cézanne probably painted this scene on or near his family's property outside of Aix-en-Provence.</p> |
| BF108 | <p>During the 1870s, alongside his ambitious modern life subjects such as Leaving the Conservatory, Renoir painted many canvases of single figures. Some of these were portraits, but most were more generic, showing unidentified figures, generally bust length, focusing on their everyday activities. Woman Crocheting is one of the most elaborated and highly finished of these canvases.</p> |
| BF532 | <p>A bouquet of pink, red, and white flowers (mostly anemones and roses) bursts from a tan jar with shiny blue-green glaze. Renoir painted the blossoms in a gradient of life stages, from budding to fading, with energetic, impasto brushstrokes. He wrote to a friend, "When I paint flowers, I place colors and experiment with values boldly." He may have painted this bouquet for the art market, at a time when the impressionists' still lives sold more easily than their figures and landscapes.</p> |
| BF38 | <p>This work reveals Renoir's attention to the color relationships between figure and landscape. A woman with a straw hat relaxes in a lush, natural setting shown in predominantly gold, green, and red colors; these same tones also appear throughout the figure's flesh and drapery. The effect is a merging of forms, of woman with nature.</p> |
| BF97 | <p>Renoir painted the nude figure obsessively, especially during the later decades of his career, when he had turned away from impressionism. Here, as in so many of his canvases, Renoir idealizes the figure, emphasizing her gently curving contours and unblemished skin. Her body is turned toward the viewer so as to supply uninterrupted visual pleasure. Cradled by the landscape, the subject comes across not so much as a real person but as a fantasy of woman and nature in perfect harmony.</p> |
| BF636 | <p>This sketch, like many of the hundreds of Degas's dancer studies, never appeared in a completed composition. Drawn from life, the sheet records one of a variety of ballet positions. The dancer appears to have been in action when Degas drew her—his marks show a change of position in the forward, stepping foot and the raising of the tutu. Degas was preoccupied with the human figure in movement, and these dancer studies underscore the importance of drawing in his painting practice. The great neoclassical painter Ingres is said to have once instructed the young painter: "Draw lines, young man, draw lines."</p> |
| BF638 | <p>Degas made dozens of sketches in pastel and charcoal of the <em>toilette</em> theme of a woman bathing in a tub. The artist was known to collect Japanese woodblock prints, including one depicting a bathhouse in which the poses of the female figures reflect the sometimes awkward reality of bathing versus an idealized one. Here Degas portrays the effort necessary to lift or lower one's body in and out of the tub, a treatment consistent with the artist's agenda of exploring the human body in motion.</p> |
| BF635 | <p>This subtle outline of a half-length figure demonstrates Modigliani's sensitive observation of the slightest variation in physiognomy and his ability to depict forms with the utmost economy of means. Here, he followed a summary definition of the image with a series of secondary marks to add precision. The composition appears spontaneous, with no evident reworking. On the upper left corner, Modigliani, who often recited lines from his favorite poets, inscribed the title "Bairon," which is the phonetic transcription of the last name of the English writer George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824).</p> |
| BF766 | <p>Seeking refuge from the First World War in Brooklyn, Pascin and his companion at the time, the French painter Hermine David, toured the South and traveled around the Caribbean, visiting Mexico and Cuba. While David's work mainly focused on landscapes, he took an exoticized view of local people. The energy conveyed by this hastily sketched drawing befits the bustling street scene: a woman is talking to a child, a prostitute confronts a potential client, and several men are engaged in a discussion.</p> |
| BF853 | <p>This small painting, made for private prayer, illustrates the parable of Lazarus and Dives from the Gospel of Luke. Dives was a rich man who "dressed in purple and fine linen" and "lived in luxury every day." Lazarus was a beggar, covered with sores, who yearned for crumbs from the rich man's table but was left to the dogs. In the parable, after both men die, two devils drag the selfish Dives into the flames of hell while Lazarus's soul is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham, to join in the celestial banquet. Surrounding Lazarus and Abraham are the ghostly figures of music-making angels who perform the hymns of heaven.</p> |
| BF178 | <p>William Glackens's son Ira wrote that his father never arranged flowers for his compositions. Instead, Glackens would discover them positioned about the house by his wife, Edith, and then take them into his studio. A blue-and-yellow pitcher seems barely to contain these bold, elegant blossoms. Flowers overpower the pitcher; only a portion of the handle is visible. Complementary colors set in juxtaposition—orange tulips against blue pottery, teal green leaves opposite mauve peonies—help create the canvas's vibrancy.</p> |
| 01.16.33 | <p>This sunburst ornament was probably the halo of a cult image of the Virgin Mary in one of her many guises, such as Our Lady of the Incarnation, Our Lady of Sorrows, or Our Lady of Refuge. The object has an openwork center with a series of straight and wavy lines radiating outward, six of which feature stars at their ends. Originally there would have been twelve stars, an attribute of the Virgin Mary taken from the biblical book of Revelation ("And there appeared a great wonder in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars").</p> |
| BF743 | <p><em>Field Flowers</em> is signed and dated "Mélanie Marc 1842." Marc presents a bouquet of pink musk mallows, blue cornflower, and sunshine-yellow poppy anemones, arranging them so that we see the flowers at multiple angles and stages of life. In some areas, the paint is nearly transparent and reveals multiple layers of flowers; the delicate precision is offset by opaque white constellations of anthers on the central musk mallows and cornflowers. Many botanical artists in the 18th and 19th centuries were women.</p> |
| BF670 | <p>The large eye, stylized brow, and stocky trunk in this quick sketch of a standing female nude register the influence of ancient Iberian sculpture on Picasso's art around 1906. The heavy lines in the figure's upper half give it a sense of sculptural immobility—as though carved out of the page by pencil—while the raised right foot and bent leg reflect a more humanistic naturalism, showcasing Picasso's habitual synthesis of styles. The rough edge of this sheet (covered by the mat) indicates that it was likely torn from a sketchbook.</p> |
| BF2528 | <p>In this microcosmic and dreamlike scene, a fleet of boats sails amid a pale marbled background that suggests clouds as much as water. Some are recognizable as sailboats—like the one at center, with a triangular sail; others look more like submarines, rockets, or a broom. The vertical orientation and delicate pen strokes heighten the sensation of floating. </p> |
| BF613 | <p>Pascin was an active traveler, exploring various places around the globe throughout his lifetime, from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean. He tended toward a highly exoticized portrayal of all non-European societies, and were it not for the titles and dates he inscribed on the drawings, we might not be able to pinpoint the exact locations of the scenes. However, sometimes small details such as a man's hat serve as geographical identifiers. The fez, a cylindrical red hat with a tassel on top, is often seen in his Tunisian drawings, such as this one from 1921.</p> |
| BF738 | <p>On a single branch, a series of pink roses unfolds from tight buds into a full flower. The composition resembles the botanical illustration <em>Rosa centifolia</em> (<em>Hundred-Petaled Rose</em>) by the renowned Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Here, the artist amplified the plant's realism with a drop of water on the open rose and a yellow butterfly resting on a leaf.</p> |
| BF681 | <p>Throughout his career, the possibilities of the human body in motion captivated Picasso. This sheet seems to represent the same slender acrobat in different poses, turning the "three" trapeze artists into a trope that recalls the Three Graces by allowing Picasso to present multiple angles of the body on a two-dimensional surface. Here, the artist does not draw any attention to setting, costuming, or color, relying on the economy of contour to isolate his formal investigations.</p> |
| BF1093 | <p>This work comes from a series of 29 etchings created by Matisse to be published in a book alongside poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé. Here Herodias, the mother of the biblical princess Salome, sits while a nursemaid fixes her hair. Having never made an illustrated book before, Matisse decided he didn't want to make conventional illustrations but rather to create a visual equivalent for the effect of the poetry on the reader. Happily, Mallarmé's poetry—evocative, ambiguous, and rhythmic—proved a perfect foil to Matisse's aesthetic approach.</p> |
| BF690 | <p>Degas spent the greater part of his career drawing and painting dancers of the Paris Opera ballet corps. He attended not only performances but dance classes and rehearsals, where he made numerous sketches from life. Here a dancer stands at the ballet barre, dressed in a simple rehearsal outfit. Degas captures the movement of the plié in second position with firm graphite lines, indicating the solidly planted feet and rotation of the legs. It was the precision of the dancers' movements that greatly interested the artist.</p> |
| BF675 | <p>This drawing holds in careful balance a variety of discrete figures unaffiliated with any one composition and marked by a disparity of scale, media, finish, and technique. In this way, Picasso self-consciously imitated the appearance of old master study sheets, such as those by Michelangelo and Leonardo. His attention to the overall harmony of the page as well as the negative space around individual figures reveals that what might first be viewed as a random aggregate of spontaneous sketches is in fact a considered work of art.</p> |
| 01.18.90 | <p>This spatula's blend of iron, copper, and brass has its stylistic origins in 19th-century Belgium. Cooking utensils made from this blend of metals were given as wedding gifts and would have been meant for display only. The brass's high shine would have reflected the light from the sun or fire and cast a warm reflection in the room where it was hung.</p> |
| 01.18.18 | <p>Spatula design has changed little over time. Indeed, this one from the 19th century has a shape familiar to us today. We also still use spatulas in ways a 19th-century chef would recognize, from flipping food in a pan to scraping pots. However, our culinary predecessors would have likely refered to this common tool as a "turner" instead of a spatula. The hook on the end allowed the tool to be hung up when not in use.</p> |
| 01.16.07 | <p>This enormous "key" has a club-shaped cutout in its tooth and an oval ring at the end of its handle. It did not actually unlock anything but served as a sign to advertise a locksmith's shop. Such signs proliferated in European towns and cities from the Middle Ages until the 19th century, when street addresses became standardized and new technologies began to replace traditional craftwork.</p> |
| BF1091 | <p>This work is one of four gouache studies that Matisse made while working on the <em>Dance</em> mural for Dr. Barnes. These small color studies helped the artist work out the palette for the mural; as the Barnes work attests, Matisse initially considered incorporating a bright section of yellow at the bottom right of the composition. Once he had finalized the color scheme of blue, black, and pink, he likely didn't need these studies anymore and gifted one to Dr. Barnes.</p> |
| 01.27.01 | <p>Commissioned by entrepreneur Marie Cuttoli, this tapestry was designed by Georges Rouault and woven in Aubusson, France. The scene's tender yet sorrowful tone can be linked to Rouault's Catholicism, which led him to focus on the humanity and spiritual light in people who lived on the fringes of society. Appropriately, the jewel tones and black outlines of <em>The Little Family</em> mimic stained glass.</p> |
| BF719 | <p>This monumental canvas, which once hung in the famous collection of Gertrude and Leo Stein, is one of the watershed paintings in the history of European modernism. When Matisse first exhibited it in Paris in 1906, audiences were shocked. The problem wasn't the subject; the theme of sensual arcadia, with figures dancing and making music in a natural setting, had been a standard for centuries. It was the execution—the bold colors, the jarring shifts in scale, and the distorted anatomies. As Gertrude Stein would later write, "Matisse painted <em>Le Bonheur de vivre</em> and created a new formula for color that would leave its mark on every painter of the period."</p> |
| BF1028 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene is known as a retablo. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. Jerome is represented here with several of his traditional attributes. He holds a cross and a set of rocks, while a lion sits at his feet and a trumpet in the corner announces the final judgement.</p> |
| 01.27.02 | <p>This tapestry was designed by Pablo Picasso and woven in Aubusson, France. Two kneeling women face each other: one sitting upright, and the other leaning on a support that resembles a <em>prie-dieu</em> (a prayer-desk for domestic use). Picasso used paper collage to create his composition; the Aubusson weavers transfigured its torn paper edges into shimmering passages of silk thread. The tapestry was commissioned by entrepreneur Marie Cuttoli, who supported French artists and workshops during the Great Depression by introducing products such as this tapestry to the American art market.</p> |
| 01.17.01 | <p>The star, hearts, and geometric shapes are pleasant additions to this trivet, which Dr. Barnes chose to hang above four paintings. However, the trivet's utilitarian purpose requires it to rest on a flat surface. Trivets come in many sizes and are used differently. Smaller trivets like this one often had short feet and supported hot dishes—they functioned like today's cooling racks. The decorative shapes were important for distributing and maintaining heat when serving meals. </p> |
| 01.20.13 | <p>The Bamileke kings of western Cameroon traditionally sat upon splendidly designed thrones, which themselves acquired power through contact with the royal body. The seat of this throne is supported by a crouching leopard, a strong and beautiful animal that was considered to be the king's avatar. Its carved back responds to contemporaneous European furniture design, indicating that it was made either for a ruler who favored novelty or for the foreign market.</p> |
| BF714 | <p>Mired in poverty, Picasso traveled between Spain and France in the first years of the 20th century. On his second trip to Paris in 1901, he met the poet and art critic Max Jacob, and the instant friends shared an apartment the next year. Back in Barcelona in 1903, Picasso wrote regularly to Jacob about his struggles and, especially, his art. This double-sided document dated to August 6 captures an early stage of <em>The Blind Man's Meal</em> (1903; The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The dog featured in the sketch was overpainted in the final composition.</p> |
| BF2519 | <p>German painter Alo Altripp was labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis, and German troops closed a 1933 exhibition of his paintings in Essen. But when the Gestapo ordered him to cease painting, Altripp continued making art, working in secret and using whatever materials he could find. This work is an example of <em>art informel</em>, a movement characterized by gestural expression and an undermining of solid form. Viewed through the lens of history, it pulses with the blood, fire, and sorrow of oppression and war.</p> |
| BF662 | <p>Rooted in Degas's early training in the academic style of the formidable French painter Ingres, this sketch portrays a bather viewed from behind. The motif of the idealized female bather has been treated throughout the history of Western art, but Degas's sketch emphasizes the mundane act of a woman drying her body. He places his subject in a naturalistic pose, crouching and reaching, and focuses on portraying the movement and effort required to bathe rather than staging a static pose.</p> |
| A281 | <p>This type of mask is sometimes identified as a portrait mask, and probably represents an important ancestor. The pair of curved shapes at the top represent shuttles, which are tools used in weaving. </p> |
| A284 | <p>This brightly painted face mask is an example of a type worn by young men of the Jula and Kulango peoples of the Ivory Coast. This is one of the few types of masks that were not abandoned after the introduction of Islam and were incorporated into Islamic festivals such as the <em>kubuti</em> dances held on the evening of the 14th day of Ramadan. The brilliant colors of the masks acted as a counterpart to the bright skirts worn by unmarried woman during these ceremonies.</p> |
| A282 | <p>Called mukudj, masks of this type depict an idealized vision of womanhood and are believed to be portraits of local women renown for their beauty. The surface is covered with kaolin, a clay mineral whose white color is associated with the ancestral realm; its use here is meant to elevate the woman depicted to the status of a spiritual entity. Such masks were worn by male dancers entertaining their audience with wild acrobatics and daring feats of choreography. </p> |
| A276 | <p>The unity of this couple is evident in the male's embrace as well as in the similarities in the figures' upright forms and geometric facial features. Yet the two figures turn ever so slightly away from each other, perhaps a visual marker for their individualized roles within Baule society. This sculpture was made by a Baule artist working in late 19th-century Côte d'Ivoire. Occasionally a sculpture like this would have been removed from its concealed shrine, shielded with a cloth, and placed in a public space where its owner, a professional diviner, would perform divination rituals.</p> |
| A272 | <p>Kongo sculptors carved idealized statues of a privileged family's revered ancestors to mediate between the living and the dead. This figure's costume and thoughtful pose show that he was a leader who guided his community with moral rectitude. The large size of the head reiterates his intellect, as do the eyes (now missing), which would have been made of inlaid glass or porcelain, reflective materials that symbolize clairvoyance.</p> |
| A274 | <p>In the Kuba culture, this type of vessel would have been used as a container for palm-wine. It was most likely a prestige object, commissioned by a wealthy individual for his personal use. The geometric design is characteristic of the Kuba aesthetic; such patterns can also be found in the culture's handwoven raffia textiles. </p> |
| A277 | <p>This object might have originally served as a bu gle, a martial mask worn to frighten enemies or goad warriors into battle. </p> |
| A271 | <p>In Dan society, masks represent the spiritual powers who mediate between human beings and the ultimate creator deity, Zlan, a sculptor who shaped the entire universe. The original identities of decontextualized Dan masks can be difficult to determine, though this one is unusual for retaining costume elements of fiber, shell beads, and fabric, hinting at its sacred performative context.</p> |
| A275 | <p>This highly decorated gong striker features stacked images of a bird, a canine mask, a small animal in the teeth of the mask, and an elongated leopard. Baule spirit mediums called <em>komyen</em> used the object during trance ceremonies. Originally a piece of cotton cloth would have been attached to the striker, allowing for a mellow note to be struck, which would help the medium to reestablish his trance state.</p> |
| BF668 | <p>This sheet documents two images of a bulky acrobat with brick-shaped weights resting on his arms. While Picasso's 1905 paintings on circus themes typically depict performers he befriended outside their social function as public spectacles, Picasso turned to drawing to explore the feats of the human body he witnessed during regular visits to Montmartre's Cirque Médrano, a popular site also featured in works by Renoir, Degas, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec.</p> |
| BF1092 | <p>Matisse originally meant for this etching to appear as an illustration in a book of poetry by the great French symbolist writer Mallarmé. <em>Afternoon of a Faun</em> tells the story of a faun who awakens from a dream in which he believes he remembered raping two nymphs only to fall asleep again and encounter the nymphs once more. This composition is closer in subject matter to <em>The Joy of Life</em> (BF719) than any of the Mallarmé illustrations—a satyr plays his pipes in the foreground, two figures relax in the middle ground, and three figures dance in the distance.</p> |
| A268 | <p>In eastern Gabon, several cultures known collectively as Kota practiced a form of ancestral veneration in which the bones of the deceased were preserved and honored. It was believed that the bones of notable individuals, such as spiritual leaders, fertile women, and powerful judges, retained their extraordinary powers after death. Relics--typically the skull and other symbolically relevant bones -- were kept as protective devices by the deceased's relatives. Bound together in a bundle, the relics were placed inside a woven bark container; the container and its contents were protected by a guardian figure like this one. Kota reliquary guardian figures are usually sculpted of wood and then wrapped with copper-alloy sheets and strips. The use of metal has both symbolic and aesthetic meaning. Metal was a highly valued material imported from Europe; sheathing the figure in metal alluded to wealth, underscoring the importance of the individual whose bones were preserved. Also, the shiny and reflective surface of the material was thought to deflect malevolent forces. </p> |
| A267 | <p>Most relatively small single figures depicting an ideal of attractiveness were carved to represent an individual's spouse in the other world--an intensely private use.</p> |
| A260 | <p>Balanced asymmetry is a distinctive feature of Baule design. Openwork triangles flank a small face at the top of this work, evoking a small figure standing with its hands on its hips. The zigzag border might give a clue as to the area in which the piece was made. The pattern is typical of works made in the western half of Baule country.</p> |
| A263 | <p>The enlarged, oval head, exaggerated eyes, and simplified body of this sculpture express the importance of the head in the reliquary practices (Bwiti) of the Kota people of eastern Gabon. These sculptures represented influential ancestors who had significant roles in the community. The large head and eyes emphasized the ancestors' heightened awareness and vigilance. Bones of the ancestors were often wrapped in a bundle, attached to the base of the sculpture, and placed in a wooden reliquary box or casket.</p> |
| BF655 | <p>In 1921, Albert Barnes bought a batch of watercolors by Paul Cézanne from Leo Stein (Gertrude Stein's brother), including this landscape of trees. During recent treatment, conservators discovered a previously unknown watercolor by the artist—a drawing of a manor house and rock formation in the distance—on the back. Cézanne often worked this way, using both sides of the pages in his sketchbooks as he walked the landscape around Aix-en-Provence.</p> |
| BF658 | <p>Charles Demuth began painting cubist-inspired landscapes around 1916. In this one, he merges rounded organic forms into cubism's typically hard angles, as tree branches curve around the intersecting planes of abstracted architecture. Demuth was deeply indebted to Cézanne, whose work he knew from Albert Barnes's collection and from his many trips to Paris. Dr. Barnes understood this connection and installed Demuth's cubist landscapes with several Cézanne watercolors.</p> |
| BF858 | <p>In this dusky tableau, apparently set in a Venetian palazzo, we see a servant carrying a tea tray, two seated women holding half-masks, and a fully masked man who seems to have just entered the room. The man's cape and tricorn hat signify that it's carnival season. He holds a handbell and gazes directly at one woman but gestures to the other. The glances exchanged between all four parties create a sense of suspense for the viewer. Indeed, in early modern Venice, the practice of masking was fundamentally about defying social rules. Dr. Barnes suggested another context for this painting by displaying it with African masks.</p> |
| A278 | <p>This mask, called <em>gu</em>, depicts a beautiful woman with filed teeth, refined features, and an elaborate topknot. The scarification patterns on her face come in groups of three, a number the Guro people of the Ivory Coast associated with women. These types of mask were said to represent the wife or daughter of the fearsome nature spirit <em>zamble</em>, depicted in another mask genre. The deeply incised lines under the eyes of this mask mark it as a piece by the Duonu Master, a Guro master carver based in the central region of Duonu.</p> |
| BF2066 | <p>Two black-hatted figures walk along the shore of the Bay of Corinth, toward two beached boats. Beyond the bay rise the Peloponnese Mountains, presented as sheer vertical planes of gray, purple, and brown. Gritchenko had begun his career among avant-garde circles in Moscow but fled following the revolutions of 1918. He spent the next few years immersing himself in Mediterranean sites, seeking to capture what he understood as deep connections between ancient artistic traditions and modernism.</p> |
| A253 | <p>In the Kuba culture, this type of vessel would have been used as a container for palm-wine. It was most likely a prestige object, commissioned by a wealthy individual for his personal use.</p> |
| A250 | <p>In the Kuba culture, this type of vessel would have been used as a container for palm-wine. It was most likely a prestige object, commissioned by a wealthy individual for his personal use. The geometric design is characteristic of the Kuba aesthetic; such patterns can also be found in the culture's handwoven raffia textiles. </p> |
| 01.06.58 | <p>This French Renaissance lock plate is shaped to resemble the façade of a Greco-Roman temple. The upper area, shaped like an architectural pediment, shows the head of a woman wearing an elaborate headdress featuring a crescent moon. Supporting the pediment are two caryatids (female-shaped columns) with crescent moons at their hips. The classical motifs—especially the moons, which are the emblem of the goddess Diana—may associate this lock with the learned and powerful Diane de Poitiers, royal mistress of King Henry II of France.</p> |
| 01.06.28 | <p>Unlike much of the metalwork in the collection created for everyday use—small objects like ladles, scissors, and hinges—this 18th-century key has always been meant for display. It was made as a sign for a locksmith's shop in France. The ornate decoration was probably intended to show off the skills of the artisan who owned the shop.</p> |
| A168 | <p>Among the Kota peoples of eastern Gabon, guardian figures adorned the reliquary ensembles used in ancestral veneration. The relics—which nearly always included the skull—were bound together and attached to the figure's lozenge-shaped body. The creators of guardian figures emphasized the head, reflecting the importance of the skull relic. This figure's face is divided into distinct passages: a bold copper ridge forms a bilateral division and contrasts with the yellow tone of the brass forehead. The broad eyes and mouth, also in copper, denote a sense of vigilance and heightened awareness.</p> |
| A169 | <p>Guardian figures adorned the reliquary ensembles used by the Kota peoples in ancestral veneration. This figure's face is bisected by a vertical ridge of red copper, which contrasts with the yellow brass of the high forehead. Kota patrons conceived of the play of light upon the figures' brilliant surfaces as analogous to that on bodies of water, which they identified with the threshold into the ancestral realm. The costliness of the metals was a further statement of devotion, to impress upon ancestors the degree to which they were respected.</p> |
| 01.21.39 | <p>Characterized by its triangular seat and turned-wood frame, this so-called Great Chair dates to the 17th century and was manufactured somewhere in England. This style of seating was popular throughout the British Isles and in the Netherlands beginning in the 15th century; similar chairs can be seen in drawings attributed to the artistic circles of Rogier van der Weyden.</p> |
| 01.21.37 | <p>Made somewhere in Europe or the Mediterranean at an unknown date, this object is a remarkable display of virtuoso metalworking—even if its functionality is questionable. A twisting rod decorated with a dragon and a human figure supports the lamp. A serpent-shaped handle is affixed to the top; a turtle forms the base. The serpent eating its own tail recalls the ancient Ouroboros, a motif associated with alchemy. The dragon perhaps alludes to the heat and light that such an object would have produced.</p> |
| A175 | <p>The rounded, polished, and finely carved details of this male ancestral figure are characteristic of the sculpture of the Beembe people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The designs on his abdomen represent scarification patterns, a symbol of beauty and fashion among the Beembe. The staring white porcelain eyes and drilled hole in his anus suggest this was a medicinal figure. A mixture of resin and human-based ingredients would have been inserted into the figure to provide vitality and protection to the user.</p> |
| A199 | <p>Most relatively small single figures depicting an ideal of attractiveness were carved to represent an individual's spouse in the other world--an intensely private use.</p> |
| A187 | <p>Headrests have a long history in Africa, first appearing in ancient Nubia and Egypt. This example comes from the region in central Africa now within the present-day borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was made by either the Luba or Songye peoples. The central caryatid figure may depict the owner or an ancestor, who holds the resting block for the back of the head. While this headrest may look uncomfortable, it allowed air to circulate around the head and neck, providing relief in hot climates. These objects also helped maintain elaborate women's hairstyles, which are symbols of power and prestige in many African societies.</p> |
| A183 | <p>In this spoon, the handle takes the form of a head with attributes historically identified with Puru women. These include a three-section hairstyle with a prominent central crest, and lozenge-shaped scar patterns on the forehead and temples. </p> |
| A217 | <p>The <em>lowle</em> was an important element in the regalia of a Baule trance diviner (<em>komyen</em>). It would be used to strike a gong, summoning spiritual forces and activating the diviner's enhanced state of awareness. The motif on this <em>lowle</em> depicts a <em>bo nun amuin</em> mask, an extremely sacred type of mask that women were forbidden to see.</p> |
| A211 | <p>This small figure of a woman was a power object (<em>nkisi</em>), used by ritual practitioners (<em>nganga</em>) of the Vili people of the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. These objects were meant to harness the power of ancestors to heal and protect. The cavities on the figure's abdomen and on the back of her head were filled with medicinal ingredients (<em>bilongo</em>), which are referenced in the medicine containers she holds in her hands. The woman's status and spirituality are exhibited through the fine detailing of her peaked hairstyle and bonnet and the scarification patterns on her shoulders.</p> |
| A214 | <p>Masks were linked to powerful protective spirits in Dan society, and this miniature example was likely a mobile representation of a much larger mask kept in a home. The owner would be able to carry it as a protective amulet, often rubbing it with oils and ritually "feeding" it. The lack of a treated surface and the relatively large size suggest that this example was not used and may have been sold soon after being made.</p> |
| A193 | <p>While performing in a trance, a professional spirit medium (<em>komyen</em>) would carry an iron gong and a decorated striker called a <em>lowle</em>. This <em>lowle</em> has an elegantly twisted shaft topped by a crescent-shaped element featuring a carved human figure. The three holes below the figure were used to attach a pad of waxed cloth, which created a mellow sound when the gong was struck.</p> |
| A191 | <p>Most relatively small single figures depicting an ideal of attractiveness were carved to represent an individual's spouse in the other world--an intensely private use.</p> |
| A210 | <p>In 1922 and 1923, Dr. Albert C. Barnes purchased seven Fang sculptures from Parisian gallery owner Paul Guillaume. They are among a vast corpus of biyema-byeri, ancestor figures used in Byeri rites, so emblematic of this style of African art.</p> |
| A222 | <p>Wooden combs were objects of daily life among the Senufo peoples until they were gradually replaced by plastic ones beginning in the 1960s. Combs were once so widespread that they were among the first objects that young sculptors learned to produce. The serpentine head of this comb was probably not symbolic, but rather the result of the artist's individual creativity.</p> |
| A226 | <p>Fang reliquary guardian figures are among the ritual objects of Bieri, an association devoted to the ritual honoring of the ancestors in order to obtain their goodwill. These figurative sculptures were placed on top of bark boxes containing the bones of revered ancestors, such as male founders of villages and women with exceptional spiritual powers. Such ancestors, the great of the lineage, could be called upon to assist the living in solving critical problems and dealing with issues of importance to the village.</p> |
| A229 | <p>Masks were central to life at a time when most Dan people believed in a single creator deity, Zlan, a sculptor who carved out the universe. Zlan could only be reached through <em>dü</em> (the larger spiritual powers that permeate creation), but if a <em>dü</em> needed human help, it could seek out a man in a dream and ask him to commission a carving. Once the man had the mask (known as a <em>ge</em> or <em>gle</em>) he could perform the traits and personality of the <em>dü</em>. Dan masks tend to be categorized as either <em>gle gon</em> (with angular, aggressive features), or <em>gle mu</em> with softer forms that suggest gentle personalities. This piece falls within the latter category and was associated with <em>dean gle</em> ("laughing masquerade"), indicating a friendly or pleasing spirit. Though masks were traditionally used in dance, this piece lack holes to attach it to a costume, so it may be unused.</p> |
| A213 | <p>Members of the Igun Eronmwon, the royal bronze casting guild, made hip ornaments for high-ranking courtiers and warriors of the Kingdom of Benin. They would adorn a cinched cloth, worn around the waist, a visible indication of the wearer's status. Certain details suggest this piece was made after the kingdom was sacked by the British in 1897. It has one loop and not two on the verso, indicating that it was not intended for use, and the enlarged eyes are more typical of works made in the early 20th century. By this time, rather than serve a practical function, hip ornaments were often created for a European market.</p> |
| A209 | <p>The figure shown here depicts a woman with a bowl on her head. The bowl would have contained shea butter, a product closely associated with the work of women. Besides its production, which lay entirely in the hands of women, shea butter was used to smooth their skin, as well as that of their babies. It was also an ingredient of good meals and would be easily understood as a sign of womanhood.</p> |
| A254 | <p>The Poro society of the Senufo peoples uses standing female and male statues for "the work of the dead" (the performance of burial rites). This pair of statues may have been displayed near the shelter where the rites were performed, laid alongside the body of the deceased, or pounded on the ground as a percussive instrument en route to the grave. In each case, the objects facilitated the transformation of the deceased into a benevolent ancestor spirit.</p> |
| A228 | <p>The Poro society of the Senufo peoples uses standing female and male statues for "the work of the dead" (the performance of burial rites). This pair of statues may have been displayed near the shelter where the rites were performed, laid alongside the body of the deceased, or pounded on the ground as a percussive instrument en route to the grave. In each case, the objects facilitated the transformation of the deceased into a benevolent ancestor spirit.</p> |
| A223 | <p>A nude female figure, presented frontally, supports a bowl on her head and a young child on her back. The figure's body is carved in rounded, schematic forms, and she has raised decorative marks on her face, chest, and abdomen. The child wraps its arms and legs around her torso and looks to its left, smiling. The statue may have been displayed by a wealthy woman or by a woman-organized dance troupe who wanted to express their members' ability to fulfill multiple roles.</p> |
| A224 | <p>Made in the late 19th or early 20th century within the modern borders of Mali, this mask was worn by adolescent boys from the Bamana and Marka societies. One of three <em>ndoma</em> masks purchased by Albert Barnes in the 1930s, this example is notable for its rectangular mouth and six large horns, which extend upward from the top of its head. <em>Ndoma</em> masks with six horns were associated with knowledge and education because they recalled the six senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, and orientation. This mask was originally decorated with cowrie shells and red Abrus seeds embedded into the exposed resin.</p> |
| A227 | <p>Hip ornaments were used traditionally to adorn a cinched cloth worn around the waist, but by the 20th century—after the destruction of the Kingdom of Benin by British forces—they were no longer fashionable. The scarification (incised marks) depicted on the bronze face of this hip ornament indicates that it was probably made for the European market. The patterns mix Yoruba, Igala, and Edo motifs and are unlikely to carry ritual significance. The openwork border along the top—which would have accommodated chains and bells—is also unusual. More often, this kind of detail would appear at the bottom of a piece.</p> |
| A219 | <p>This is probably the oldest and most powerful of the masks of the Dan people at the Barnes Foundation. Its wearer channeled spiritual aid while leading warriors into battle: the term <em>bu</em> echoes the sound of gunshot, and <em>gle</em> refers both to masks and to spirit forces that can enter the human world through masquerade. The protective forehead amulets, inset silver teeth, and probing eyes (to see with clarity) speak to the object's role in war, while the rough patina is likely the residue of kola nut and other sacrificial offerings to the spirit of the mask.</p> |
| BF820 | <p>In this depiction of a fashionable young woman in a Parisian garden, reflective of his painting style in the final years of his life, Manet conveys repose in his subject's gaze and movement in the swirl of her skirt. Through loose, summary brushwork, a bold line indicates clasped hands wearing gloves, and simple touches of color form eyes and mouth. The limited, earthy palette and the flattening of the figure's face evidence the artist's fascination with Japanese wood-block prints, which gained popularity in Paris during the previous decade through exhibitions of Japanese art.</p> |
| BF314 | <p>Fishing boats float on a choppy green sea next to a mass of terracotta-roofed homes; palm trees wave in the wind on the far shore. Gritchenko had begun his career among avant-garde circles in Moscow but fled following the revolutions of 1918. He spent the next few years immersing himself in Mediterranean sites, seeking to capture what he understood as deep connections between ancient artistic traditions and modernism.</p> |
| BF327 | <p>A wooden hutch stocked with serving dishes denotes the recognizable space of a kitchen—making this a departure from the simplified backgrounds characteristic of Modigliani's portraits. With stitched-up, blank eyes—one darker than the other—a young woman in a typical service dress with a white collar and apron carries a market basket on her arm. Modigliani signed his name in the upper right and painted the title across the upper left: the pairing perhaps plays on the double meaning of ménagère, which translates as both housewife and housemaid.</p> |
| 2001.25.86 | <p>This tall clock standing right by the gallery entrance speaks to Albert Barnes's delight in objects bridging the categories of "fine" and "useful." The clock's mechanical works were made in England, most likely in the late 1800s, and its oak case produced in the US. The face includes a small dial for seconds, and three keyholes for winding. A lever on the right side offers three different chimes sounds, based on the bell tones at the English churches of Westminster, St. Michaels, and St. Mary-le-Bow. </p> |
| 01.21.05 | <p>In Pennsylvania German communities, dairy farmers would use wooden paddles like this to mold freshly churned butter into individual cakes. The heart and flower designs are common to the Pennsylvania German culture but have roots in European woodworking traditions. Butter molds were used in both domestic and commercial settings, and the decorative designs could help to identify specific producers.</p> |
| 01.21.06b | <p>Although a blacksmith created the initial form of this iron spatula, it is likely a whitesmith who put on the finishing touches by polishing the tool and incising, or cutting in, the decoration. The work of whitesmiths in the 18th and 19th centuries is not understood as well as blacksmiths because their roles were less common. Most whitesmiths finished metal goods in iron, tin, or steel by cleaning and ornamenting them.</p> |
| 01.21.06c | <p>Although a blacksmith created the initial form of this iron spatula, it is likely a whitesmith who put on the finishing touches by polishing and ornamenting the tool. Decoration that is part of the shape of an object must be created while the piece is hot and was thus a job for a blacksmith. Decoration that was added to the surface of metalwork, like the circles and curves on this spatula, would have been cut away by a whitesmith once the metal was cold.</p> |
| 01.21.07 | <p>Ceremonial axes were made by artisans among the Nsapo, a subgroup of the Songye tribe in the Congo renowned for their skills in working with iron and copper. Such works were owned and displayed by Songye rulers as emblems of power and prestige. </p> |
| 01.21.13 | <p>In Pennsylvania German communities, dairy farmers would use wooden paddles like this to mold freshly churned butter into individual cakes. The flower, star, and circle designs are common to the Pennsylvania German culture but have roots in European woodworking traditions. Butter molds were used in both domestic and commercial settings, and the decorative designs could help to identify specific producers.</p> |
| 01.07.06 | <p>Hog-tongs were an essential tool for managing domestic and wild pigs. The iron clasps curved around the hog's snout and jaw, while a pin—now absent—prevented the tongs from slipping. Agricultural workers and hog catchers used the tongs to ring pigs' noses, preventing them from rooting in the ground, damaging landscapes, or escaping. Displayed between two paintings, the hog-tongs lose their original function and become a sculptural form.</p> |
| 01.07.07 | <p>Hog-tongs were an essential tool for managing domestic and wild pigs. The iron clasps curved around the hog's snout and jaw, while a pin—now absent—prevented the tongs from slipping. Agricultural workers and hog catchers used the tongs to ring pigs' noses, preventing them from rooting in the ground, damaging landscapes, or escaping. Displayed between two paintings, the hog-tongs lose their original function and become a sculptural form.</p> |
| 01.21.55 | <p>In Pennsylvania German communities, dairy farmers would use wooden stamps like this to press designs into freshly churned cakes of butter. The flower motif is common to the Pennsylvania German culture but has roots in European woodworking traditions. Butter molds were used in both domestic and commercial settings, and the decorative designs, like the inclusion of the letters "K" and "C" on this example, could help to identify specific producers.</p> |
| 01.21.40 | <p>In Pennsylvania German communities, dairy farmers would use wooden stamps like this to press designs into freshly churned cakes of butter. The tulip motif is common to the Pennsylvania German culture but has roots in European woodworking traditions. Butter molds were used in both domestic and commercial settings, and the decorative designs could help to identify specific producers.</p> |
| 01.07.30 | <p>The design of this unadorned spatula may appear simple, but it was complicated to make. The blacksmith who created it would have had to beat the iron into the handle's pyramidal shape first and then slowly smooth the ends into curved, thin shapes. This would have required several hours of working the spatula on an anvil block, while constantly reheating the metal in the forge fires to keep the material from hardening.</p> |
| 01.18.83 | <p>Glassmakers at the Sandwich Glass Company created this pitcher using a two-piece mold. These molds were also used to make plates, bowls, and decanters. Meant to mimic cut or etched glass, like Waterford Crystal, these pieces were less costly to make, allowing households of more modest means to own elaborate glassware.</p> |
| 01.18.58ab | <p>Decanters and cruets were commonly used for serving and storing liquids such as oil, wine, and vinegar. This piece gets its rich color from the metal oxides added to the molten glass. Although techniques existed well before the 1800s, glassmakers in the 19th century discovered new methods to create colored glass, helping items such as this one rise in popularity. Glass colored deep red, green, and amethyst added vibrancy to domestic and public interiors.</p> |
| A437 | <p>This painted wooden statue of the Virgin Mary once included a figure of the Christ Child; the child, along with Mary's forearms, were carved from a separate piece of wood. Mary's frontal, rigid posture reflects her identity as a "Throne of Wisdom" for her son. Thrones of Wisdom, signifying Christ's status as divine wisdom incarnate, enjoyed wide popularity in 12th-century Europe. They were kept on a church's altar but were frequently used in processions, mystery plays, and other ceremonies.</p> |
| A249 | <p>Though better known as a painter, for a short while Modigliani dreamt of being a sculptor. He carved more than 20 heads like this one, although not all are as finely finished. One of the artist's unrealized ambitions was to create a temple-like grouping of stone figures. A friend recalled how, at night in the studio, Modigliani placed candles on his sculpted heads. The top of this one seems to bear traces of wax.</p> |
| A438 | <p>The patron saint of healing and pilgrims, Saint Roch fell ill from the plague but recovered with the help of a dog who licked his wounds and supplied him with bread. Here, he is dressed as a pilgrim—the Veronica Veil badge on his hat signals that his destination is Jerusalem—and lifts his tunic to reveal a plague sore. Like most statues of Saint Roch, this one was carved from wood because of its associations with the living human body and the "living wood" of the Cross, the source of eternal life according to Christian belief. It would have been carried in processions to invoke Saint Roch's aid or placed atop an altar dedicated to him.</p> |
| A283 | <p>The central scene of this painted, gilded wooden triptych shows Christ's Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his Crucifixion, based on a print by the German Master A. G. Christ prays to God the Father while the apostles Peter, John the Evangelist, and James sleep at his feet. (The chalice toward which Christ prays refers to his entreaty, "My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!") In the background, Judas—clutching the bag of silver for which he betrayed Christ—leads a group of armed officials to arrest him. The saints in the wings are Stephen and Lawrence, both deacons of the early Church whose martyrdoms echoed Christ's. This triptych was probably not an altarpiece but a votive panel mounted in a raised position on the aisle wall of a parish church.</p> |
| A234 | <p>Lithuanian-born Jacques Lipchitz moved to Paris in 1909 and quickly became part of an avant-garde circle that included Picasso, Braque, and other painters experimenting with cubism. Here, Lipchitz translates cubism into three dimensions, breaking the human body into a series of blocky, intersecting shapes. Notice how Lipchitz uses the same form—a small round circle—to represent both the human eye and the instrument's finger holes, drawing attention to the way that such forms can function as "signs" to be used interchangeably.</p> |
| 01.24.22 | <p>The distinctive flattened heart designs on the front of this wooden chest over drawers were made using a compass and are a common feature of Bieber furniture, named after a prominent Pennsylvania German woodworking family. The painted inscription, with its alternating red and black lettering, states that the object was made in 1776 for a woman named Esther Hoch from the Oley Hills in nearby Berks County, Pennsylvania.</p> |
| 01.24.42 | <p>Ascetic hermit and the founder of monasticism, Antony Abbot (d. 356) wears a monk's habit, tames a demon, and holds an open book, a reference to his extensive theological knowledge as well as his status as a living "guidebook" for good deeds. Dr. Barnes purchased this statuette as part of a group that included the equally beloved early Christian saints Antony Abbot, James, and Barbara, also displayed on this balcony. Likely they once featured in a church's interior, perhaps on a pulpit or on a large sacrament house.</p> |
| 01.24.48 | <p>The Apostle James (d. 44) holds an open book (probably a Bible), a purse, and a pilgrim's staff. The scallop shell on his hat refers to the identifying badge worn by pilgrims to his famous shrine at Santiago de Compostela. Dr. Barnes purchased this statuette as part of a group that included the equally beloved early Christian saints Antony Abbot, James, and Barbara, also displayed on this balcony. Likely they once featured in a church's interior, perhaps on a pulpit or on a large sacrament house.</p> |
| 01.24.13 | <p>With its modern frame and antique tapestry covers, this armchair represents a broader network of decorative arts created for a new American market. The Duveen Brothers—an art and antique firm—regularly partnered with local and international artisans to create reproductions of early furniture styles. The illustrated scene on this chair depicts four people resting underneath a large tree within a pastoral landscape. The basket of produce or flowers held by one of the figures suggests a harvest scene.</p> |
| 01.24.12 | <p>As with many examples of painted Pennsylvania German furniture, this chest over drawers features a limited palette and includes a combination of architectural and floral designs. Although the maker is unknown, the decoration is notable for the white outlines that highlight the columns, arches, tulips, and rosettes. An inscription located at the center of the front panel states that the object was made in 1783 for a woman named Ana Maria. Chests like this were commonly given as wedding gifts and often were the first pieces of furniture owned by a newly married couple.</p> |
| 01.24.10a | <p>In the Middle Ages, expensive beeswax candles began to replace olive oil as a luxurious way of lighting European church interiors. The small size of these candlesticks suggests that they were used on a table or altar. They stand on three twisted legs, supporting a twisted central stem, a design feature most common in the province of Aragon. The feet are shaped like the heads of dragons—fire-breathing creatures appropriate for candles and for the process of shaping iron.</p> |
| 01.24.10b | <p>In the Middle Ages, expensive beeswax candles began to replace olive oil as a luxurious way of lighting European church interiors. The small size of these candlesticks suggests that they were used on a table or altar. They stand on three twisted legs, supporting a twisted central stem, a design feature most common in the province of Aragon. The feet are shaped like the heads of dragons—fire-breathing creatures appropriate for candles and for the process of shaping iron.</p> |
| A232 | <p>Albert Barnes was Lipchitz's most enthusiastic American patron in the decades before World War II. He probably purchased this cubist sculpture in 1923, around the same time he commissioned Lipchitz, whom he had met in Paris through the art dealer Paul Guillaume, to design several bas-relief panels for the Foundation's original home in Merion. Those panels are still in place on the building's façade. </p> |
| 01.24.20 | <p>With its modern frame and antique tapestry covers, this armchair represents a broader network of decorative arts created for a new American market. The Duveen Brothers—an art and antique firm—regularly partnered with local and international artisans to create reproductions of early furniture styles. In the illustrated scene, a lone man walks through the landscape, gathering flowers that he places in his basket.</p> |
| A235 | <p>This railing pillar, carved and decorated in the round, likely came from a Buddhist or Jain stupa, a large funerary monument. The front side is dominated by a large female figure, who holds a massive lotus flower while standing on a stone or brick platform. This may depict a nature spirit (<em>yakshi</em>), whose image on a pillared railing worked to delineate the sacred space of the monument and bring the promise of good fortune for acts of worship performed at the monument.</p> |
| A415 | <p>This polychromed limestone <em>Virgin and Child</em> conveys the Christian belief that Christ's incarnation by the Virgin Mary was necessary for human salvation. Mary is crowned and enthroned as the Queen of Heaven, a reward for her extraordinary contribution to the human plight; the Christ Child stands on her left leg and nurses from her exposed breast. This statue would have offered a focal point of devotion in a parish church, castle chapel, or hospital. An elevated position on an altar or architectural support is suggested by the Virgin's elongated torso, a design that accounted for foreshortening when seen from below.</p> |
| A416 | <p>A Roman soldier leads Christ toward his Crucifixion by a rope tied around his waist. Two tormenters jeer, but the consoling figure of Saint Veronica kneels to the left. Together, Veronica and Christ display the veil that she'd given him to wipe his brow and that later miraculously retained an image of his face. The forward motion of the scene points to its probable identity as an episode within a <em>Stations of the Cross</em> series, most likely set within the stone wall of a church (the traces of paint and gilding suggest an interior setting). The composition adapts an engraving by Martin Schongauer, <em>The Bearing of the Cross with Saint Veronica</em> (c. 1480).</p> |
| 01.24.36 | <p>The Virgin Mary holds the Christ Child on her right hip and stands upon a crescent moon, an allusion to the passage in Revelation 12 that describes Mary as "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet." Christ grasps her exposed nipple as a sign of his human infancy. This small limestone statue bears traces of its original multicolored painting, and Mary's contrapposto stance (where she supports her weight on one leg) may speak to the sculptor's knowledge of Italian Renaissance art. The statue would have served as a devotional image in a parish church, set on an altar or architectural support above eye level so that viewers could have met the holy figures' gazes.</p> |
| 01.24.34 | <p>This limestone statue shows the standing Virgin Mary cradling the Christ Child in her arms. It is carved nearly in the round and was once vividly painted. Christ is warmly swaddled to his mother's chest and holds the fingers of his right hand to his mouth; Mary gazes at him with a combination of tenderness and stoic knowledge of his future self-sacrifice. Christ's gesture and horizontal position are unusual for Virgin and Child groups but recur in one once displayed on the façade of a house in the Burgundian capital, Dijon (c. 1455–80; Philadelphia Museum of Art). The Barnes statue features heavy drapery, flowing hair on the figure of Mary, and a sense of serenity and composure in both subjects. These details are likewise associated with Burgundian workshops, but such statues were also rampantly popular as devotional images in sacred and secular settings across Late Gothic Europe.</p> |
| A417 | <p>This mourning figure was part of a sculptural tableau depicting the Entombment, the scriptural event when Jesus was laid to rest in a tomb. The mourners for this kind of scene usually included the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, two further Marys (of which the present sculpture was probably one), John the Evangelist, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus. These life-like representations helped medieval Christians feel like they were actually present for this critical moment of sacred history.</p> |
| 01.01.73 | <p>This large Gothic key features a flat circular bow and a thin shaft that extends well beyond the rectangular bit, which has widely cut fittings. Most likely the key was made for everyday use in what must have been a formidable door. The harmonious, sober outlines, formed from simple geometric figures, convey an impression of strength and purpose.</p> |
| 01.01.64 | <p>This ornate key was made in or around Venice in the 16th or 17th century. Its circular head contains an octagonal web motif, a foliate finial, and a zigzag around its circumference. The head attaches via a turned collar to a five-sided shank; the rectangular bit is cut with an angular, geometric design that offsets the decorative shapes in the head. The combination of delicacy and strength in the key's design speaks to the virtuoso technique of metalworking and to the power of possession symbolized by keys.</p> |
| 01.01.63 | <p>A prominent keyhole pierces the body of this dragon-shaped escutcheon. It also has four clawed feet, saw-like teeth, and a looped red tongue, by which it could mount to a door. The metalworker who created this dragon skillfully distinguished its face with etched lines, its sinuous neck and tail with ropelike twists, and its keyhole with scales radiating outward. The fierce, mythical animal may have been chosen to attract good fortune and ward off trouble; perhaps the tip of its tail, which is smooth and discolored, was rubbed for good luck.</p> |
| BF847 | <p>This painting by an unknown Northern Renaissance artist depicts three of the 12 apostles. Three other paintings in this series depict the remaining nine. Simon, on the left, can be identified by the saw he is holding. The central figure, a fresh-faced youth holding a chalice, is likely John. The chalice became one of John's symbols because he proved the strength of his faith by surviving after drinking poison. The elderly figure on the right holding a book is more difficult to identify. John, who is likely the central figure, was also the only apostle to live to old age and die from natural causes. However, because this figure is holding a book, there is a possibility that he is Matthew, who also wrote a Gospel.</p> |
| BF787 | <p>This panel was painted for a multipaneled altarpiece believed to be from Szászrégen in Transylvania, in present-day Romania. The piece was painted by the same artist who created the nearby paintings <em>Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego</em>, <em>Seven Fat and Seven Lean Cows</em>, and <em>Two Men and Stocks</em>. Each of the panels on the altarpiece likely corresponded with another image on the panel, strengthening the meaning of each story by drawing thematic parallels between the Old and New Testaments. These pairings are called typological pairs and are common in medieval and Renaissance art. This painting depicts Christ appearing to the disciples after the Resurrection. While there were 12 disciples, only five are depicted here.</p> |
| BF786 | <p>This painting of a scene from the Book of Genesis was created for a multipaneled altarpiece. On the left side of the scene, Joseph interprets the dream of Pharaoh, dressed as a medieval king. The dream is depicted on the right side in the arched window. Seven ugly, sickly cows and sparsely growing wheat are on one side, and fat, healthy cows and bountiful wheat are on the opposite side. Joseph interpreted the seven fat cows and the bountiful heads of wheat to represent seven years of abundance for Egypt, followed by seven years of famine, represented by the ugly, skinny cows and the withering grain. This painting featured on the same altarpiece as the nearby panel depicting Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, another Old Testament subject about interpreting the dreams of a king.</p> |
| BF240 | <p>A favorite locale of artists, the peninsula of Saint-Jean was renowned for its groves of spectacular olive trees. Here a group of holidaymakers and a farmer across the bay add to the view's picturesque quality. The soft, abbreviated brushstrokes lend the landscape its suffusive harmony and are consistent with Renoir's technique in the 1890s. During these years, Renoir increasingly came to realize the limitations of painting en plein air (outdoors), so while he started the canvas on the spot, he likely completed it in the studio—a practice advocated by Camille Corot, whom he admired.</p> |
| BF1012 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. In this retablo, Saint Joseph holds the Christ Child in one hand and a stalk of lilies in the other. The artist appears to have rendered Joseph's carpenter tools, a clue to the saint's identity, at right.</p> |
| BF1015 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. The Virgin Mary was a common subject for retablos along with saints and angels. This retablo actually depicts a statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception that is said to have cured a mortally wounded child in the village of San Juan de los Lagos in Mexico. The Basilica of San Juan de los Lagos, which houses the statue, remains a pilgrimage site to this day.</p> |
| BF576 | <p>This painting is part of a series of reclining nude figures that Modigliani began in 1917. Characterized by a frank, self-conscious sexuality, these paintings shocked contemporary audiences; police removed one from an exhibition in Paris for perceived impropriety. Also shocking was Modigliani's mixing together of several traditions across a single figure: while the masklike treatment of the face draws on the vocabularies of African sculpture, the languorous, sensual body recalls the nudes of European painters like Titian and Boucher.</p> |
| BF785 | <p>This painting was created for a multipaneled altarpiece believed to be from Szászrégen in Transylvania, in present-day Romania. The panels included scenes from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and each scene was connected to another in order to strengthen the message of its story. These are known typological pairs and were common in religious art during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This image depicts a poor man and a rich man in stocks, with a third figure holding an elaborately decorated vase. While the source of the subject is unknown, it is likely biblical, and it would have been included as a foil to a story in another panel.</p> |
| BF788 | <p>This panel painting depicts a story from the Book of Daniel. Three friends of Daniel, called Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, quickly rose the ranks at the court of Babylon, where King Nebuchadnezzar ruled. After Daniel interpreted a dream that the king had about a golden statue, Nebuchadnezzar decided to build a golden statue for all of his people to worship. Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego were followers of the Jewish religion, which forbids the worship of false idols, so they refused to worship the king's golden statue. In response the king ordered that they be thrown into the furnace, where they were miraculously saved by God. This miracle caused King Nebuchadnezzar to pronounce the Jewish God as the one true deity. This painting shows the moment the three were saved from the furnace and was created for a multipaneled altarpiece.</p> |
| BF848 | <p>The apostles Philip, Bartholomew, and Andrew are depicted in this 15th-century painting by an unknown northern artist. It is one of group four paintings that together depict all 12 of the apostles. On the left, Philip wears an olive green cloak and holds a cross. Bartholomew, in the center, is depicted with thick, dark hair and a beard. He holds a scimitar, the instrument of his martyrdom. On the right is Andrew, holding a saltire. This type of cross came to be known as Saint Andrew's cross and is the symbol on the flag of Scotland.</p> |
| BF1026 | <p>Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a title given to the Virgin Mary as the patron of the Carmelite order. In this role, she is usually depicted in a brown habit, holding the Christ Child. Here the Virgin and Christ each hold a scapular, a garment worn by the Carmelite order, around their shoulders. Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles.</p> |
| A125 | <p>This mask features an elongated face with antelope horns and a small female figure perched atop. These motifs likely represent success in future farming and courting, as such masks were worn by young boys during initiation into a Bamana society called Ntomo, which introduced them to adult codes of conduct. The small, closed mouths of the figure and the face on the mask reflect the discipline of silence taught to boys.</p> |
| A202 | <p>This Kota reliquary sculpture is overlaid in contrasting copper and brass. The use of costly metal overlays speaks to the veneration afforded to the ancestors depicted. The metals also provided a highly reflective, luminous quality, evoking the watery domain that was the threshold between life and death.</p> |
| A109 | <p>Reliquary guardian figures were protective devices for the bones of a deceased person. In Kota culture, the guardian figures are usually abstracted human forms that have been sculpted from wood and then wrapped with copper-alloy sheets and strips. The use of metal symbolizes wealth and power and also deflects malevolent forces. This figure has round eyes, exposed teeth, and an arched hat.</p> |
| 01.22.41 | <p>In Pennsylvania German communities, dairy farmers would use wooden stamps like this to press designs into freshly churned cakes of butter. The flower-heart motif is common to the Pennsylvania German culture but has roots in European woodworking traditions. Butter molds were used in both domestic and commercial settings, and the decorative designs could help to identify specific producers.</p> |
| BF267 | <p>Glackens was intrigued by what he called the "absolute purity" of flowers and their glorious colors, which allowed for endless tonal exploration in paint. The orange background takes over this composition, almost obscuring the orange-red lilies. While the background color brings out the blue-green bowl and helps to emphasize the pink and yellow zinnias, other blooms must be discovered by the patient eye, following a gentle diagonal from bottom right to upper left—from soft blue to deep orange.</p> |
| BF641 | <p>Glackens probably made these sketches on the streets of New York City, capturing on-the-spot impressions of sidewalk traffic. Eight women dressed in overcoats walk with varying degrees of determination and leisure. One carries parcels; another's skirt billows in the wind. Each subject is depicted alone, except for a pair in matching hoods and cloak, who lean in toward each other as they proceed. Glackens was, according to fellow artist and critic Guy Pène du Bois, "the father of the present school of illustrating," whose "notations on the life around him... fulfilled characters [even in] scenes but half drawn." Glackens defined each figure with crisp, shorthand notations, a style that he had developed while working as an artist-reporter for Philadelphia newspapers upon graduating from Central High School in 1890.</p> |
| BF988 | <p>Aristodimos Kaldis immigrated to America from Greece and became a painter, lecturer, and left-wing activist in New York City. <em>Absorbing Art</em> shows a Black man sitting on a bench in what appears to be an art gallery or museum. The paintings on the walls behind him—a medieval religious panel and a modern abstraction—seem to reflect Kaldis's interest in the making connections between disparate cultural traditions.</p> |
| BF332 | <p>Soutine depicts a church swallowed up by a turbulent southern French landscape. While the building's belltower stands erect, the main vessel stretches at an alarming angle across roiling hills crackling with acidic pinks, yellows, and purples. A black, leafless tree seems to claw at the scene. Soutine's passionately distorted image recalls the Byzantine tradition of landscape painting, as seen in the Post-Byzantine Nativity in Room 15. </p> |
| A116 | <p>Merina figurative bas-relief bed panels, as exemplified by these two pieces (A108 and A116) in the Barnes collection, were likely carved by professionals who strove to meet the demand for novel aesthetic practices in 19th-century lmerina.</p> |
| BF845 | <p>This 15th-century Northern Renaissance painting by an unknown artist depicts three of the 12 apostles. James, son of Zebedee, is on the left side. He can be identified by his walking staff and by the scallop shells ornamenting his cloak and pilgrim's hat. The scallop shells are one of James's symbols because he was working on the seashore when he was called to follow Jesus. Peter is holding the Keys of Heaven and is dressed in a blue robe and a yellow mantle. He would become the first pope and is often depicted alongside symbols of the papacy. The apostle holding an axe could be Paul, Matthias, or Matthew; all three were beheaded and are often accompanied by axes in paintings.</p> |
| A101 | <p>This mask genre is related to Ntomo, a Bamana association concerned with the education of young boys. Such masks, worn by boys during their initiation, are meant to reinforce Bamana codes of conduct and behavior. The standing figure and raised horns on the mask may allude to important Bamana cosmological beliefs.</p> |
| A108 | <p>Merina figurative bas-relief bed panels, as exemplified by these two pieces (A108 and A116) in the Barnes collection, were likely carved by professionals who strove to meet the demand for novel aesthetic practices in 19th-century lmerina.</p> |
| BF396 | <p>In this large devotional panel, the condemned Christ stumbles as he drags the Cross through the city of Jerusalem to the site of his Crucifixion. His mother and disciples—passing through the city gate at left—watch sadly and console one another. Christ and his followers are taunted by crowds of soldiers and civilians. Their spears, halberds, and clubs mark the procession's progress against the gilt background, and their grimaces show physical evidence of their spiritual disorder. This harrowing scene provoked such a powerful reaction in some medieval viewers that they scourged some of the antagonists' faces.</p> |
| BF1010 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or the Virgin Mary. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles. The Virgin Mary is referred to as Our Lady of Sorrows, in reference to her seven sorrows, and is often shown in a mournful state. She is seen here with eyes downcast and hands in prayer.</p> |
| A436 | <p>The erratically carved arches of this Gothic-style triptych, in addition to the ambiguous attributes of the saints in its wings, hint that it's not a genuine medieval production. While Dr. Barnes dated the triptych to the 15th century, he was probably more interested in its capacity to complement some of the West African sculptures in this room, which he thought shared visual qualities with Gothic architecture.</p> |
| BF846 | <p>This is one of a series of four paintings of the 12 apostles painted by an unknown Northern Renaissance artist. On the left side of the painting is James, son of Alphaeus, also known as James the Just. He is often represented with a fuller's club, the instrument of his martyrdom. The central figure could be Paul, who is often dressed in red and green and depicted holding a sword. However, there is another figure in this series of paintings who could be Paul, so this figure cannot be definitively identified. Finally, the apostle on the right is likely Jude, who is at times accompanied by a club, as seen here.</p> |
| 01.01.01 | <p>This pair of hinge bands—because of their delicacy—probably did not reinforce a door but instead extended its hinges ornamentally. They seem to treat the wooden door as if it were still able to grow new branches. Each features a hinge loop, a straight center section with a trumpet-shaped end, and three "leaf nodes." Emerging from the first leaf node are two vine arms that divide and curl, terminating in fig-like finials.</p> |
| 01.01.39 | <p>This pair of hinge bands—because of their delicacy—probably did not reinforce a door but instead extended its hinges ornamentally. They seem to treat the wooden door as if it were still able to grow new branches. Each features a hinge loop, a straight center section with a trumpet-shaped end, and three "leaf nodes." Emerging from the first leaf node are two vine arms that divide and curl, terminating in fig-like finials.</p> |
| 01.23.68 | <p>A hasp is a hinged plate used to fasten a door or lid to another surface. Hasps usually feature a hole where the padlock or pin is inserted. However, this iron hasp is only one half of the locking mechanism. To properly secure the pin, a staple or latch is needed to join both pieces together. While the ensemble prioritizes the hasp's decorative qualities, the tool's function is incomplete without its accompanying latch.</p> |
| 01.01.48 | <p>Each side of these monumental double hinges resembles a flower with a long stem, umbrella-shaped end, and arching sides. They were the subject of one of Albert Barnes's rare explanations of his wall ensembles, explained in a letter of 1937: "Flanking the large Cézanne is a pair of hinges placed on a house in York, Pennsylvania, in 1750; note the similarity in form between the hinge and the figure standing against the tree at the extreme right in the large Cézanne."</p> |
| 01.01.45b | <p>The hoop arms of this monumental French door knocker emerge from what appears to be a classical architectural pediment, turn in dramatic reverse-curves, and meet in a variant of a bead-and-reel motif. The knocker's robustly sonorous heft complements the airy, elegant tracery of the pear-shaped plate behind, which is molded and pierced into a swirl of leafy vines. Albert Barnes believed that this was from the 12th century, but its classicizing details suggest a date in the 18th century.</p> |
| 01.01.46 | <p>Albert Barnes wrote that this elegantly traceried plaque was "a thirteenth-century Gothic iron decoration, from a door in Avignon." Although he was perhaps correct about the plaque's place of origin, we now know that the radiating pattern of daggers and pointed quatrefoils in its round central unit and the swirling <em>mouchettes</em> in its rectangular bands point to a date in the 16th century. The result resembles a Gothic rose window or indeed the elaborate bonnet of Renoir's little son in his <em>Family</em> (1896), below. Of these resemblances, Barnes declared, "The motives, such as arabesques, patterns, etc., discernable in a picture have their analogue . . . in the iron work. . . . We regard the creators of antique wrought iron just as authentic an artist as Titian, Renoir, or Cézanne."</p> |
| 01.01.41 | <p>In a letter of 1937, Albert Barnes described these as "a pair of ram's horn hinges, about 1770, from a barn in Lancaster County." Each hinge has a loop and nine rivets, and gently curves into split ends that do indeed resemble ram horns. Barnes emphasized that displaying objects such as these were critical to his educational mission: "I believe I am on my way to show... that there is no essential aesthetic difference between the forms of the great painters and sculptors, and those of the iron-workers... who made such commonplace objects as hinges." Proving his point, the curve of the hinges echoes the domed lid of the nearby <em>Copper Water Urn</em> (1732–40) by Chardin.</p> |
| 01.01.50 | <p>In a letter of 1937, Albert Barnes described these as "a pair of ram's horn hinges, about 1770, from a barn in Lancaster County." Each hinge has a loop and nine rivets, and gently curves into split ends that do indeed resemble ram horns. Barnes emphasized that displaying objects such as these were critical to his educational mission: "I believe I am on my way to show... that there is no essential aesthetic difference between the forms of the great painters and sculptors, and those of the iron-workers... who made such commonplace objects as hinges." Proving his point, the curve of the hinges echoes the domed lid of the nearby <em>Copper Water Urn</em> (1732–40) by Chardin.</p> |
| 01.01.49 | <p>Each side of these monumental double hinges resembles a flower with a long stem, umbrella-shaped end, and arching sides. They were the subject of one of Albert Barnes's rare explanations of his wall ensembles, explained in a letter of 1937: "Flanking the large Cézanne is a pair of hinges placed on a house in York, Pennsylvania, in 1750; note the similarity in form between the hinge and the figure standing against the tree at the extreme right in the large Cézanne."</p> |
| 01.23.42 | <p>Rear hound plates were part of the hardware of Conestoga wagons, a type of covered buggy named for the Conestoga River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. These wagons were used for trade and travel in the eastern American colonies and Canada from the early 1700s—but were too heavy for pioneering toward western territories. Plates like this one were found in the undercarriage, connecting the long central reach to the two "rear hounds" that branched to the rear axle. Here, punched dots decorate the upper edge and give the date of production, 1763, at center.</p> |
| 01.24.23 | <p>With its modern frame and antique tapestry covers, this armchair represents a broader network of decorative arts created for a new American market. The Duveen Brothers—an art and antique firm—regularly partnered with local and international artisans to create reproductions of early furniture styles. This illustration is believed to depict a hunting scene. The female figure carrying a bow and quiver and accompanied by a dog and attendant is likely a goddess of the hunt.</p> |
| A248 | <p>The contrasting curves and angles in this standing figure are evidence of Lipchitz's exploration of the relationship between representation and abstraction during the 1910s. To viewers at the time, the sculpture's curved hips and small waist would have seemed conventional, while the stylized hairstyle and breasts would have suggested new artistic directions. This woman is unashamedly modern—almost mechanical in appearance. The exact date that this work entered the Foundation is unclear, but Dr. Barnes likely made the purchase in the early 1920s. </p> |
| 01.24.04 | <p>Alternating bands of light and dark defined early Navajo blankets, which were worn by men and women. The blue and red elements honor the four directions and create a harmonious whole. These tightly woven blankets were highly sought after by neighboring Ute and Plains tribal chiefs.</p> |
| 01.24.38 | <p>St. Stephen is traditionally venerated as the first martyr of the Christian Church, having been stoned to death for his faith in 34 CE. The two stones embedded in the skull of this statue are his 'crown' of martyrdom. He cradles four more rocks in his left arm and a holds buckled Gospel book in his right. Dressed as a Late Gothic deacon, St. Stephen modeled steadfast faith for Christians at the end of the medieval period.</p> |
| 01.24.24 | <p>Navajo weaving dates to the mid-1600s, when the tribe settled what is now known as the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Tribespeople originally made textiles for everyday use as coats and blankets. Because of their artistry and superior craftsmanship, the objects also became highly prized as items used in trade with other Plains Indians, Spanish settlers, and eventually tourists and collectors. Albert Barnes bought Navajo blankets during the 1930s at the Hubbell Trading Post in northeastern Arizona.</p> |
| 01.24.25 | <p>The mechanical works of this chain-wound case clock were made by a specialist who had trained most likely in Germany or Switzerland and then perhaps emigrated to Pennsylvania. These features are partially visible (and accessible for fixing) through the lateral windows of the wooden case. The dial is brass and iron, with the original spandrels wrought in elegant floral designs. Set below the ornate hour hand is an engraved brass alarm-setting disk. Another craftsman would have constructed the case to the owner's tastes. This one is walnut inlaid with what may be cherrywood, with a backboard of pine or poplar. Framing the dial are spindles that evoke architectural columns; above, the arched tympanum is inscribed with the date of production, 1767.</p> |
| 01.24.01 | <p>The Spanish-inspired floral elements on this rare Navajo "slave" blanket reveal the hybrid status of its unnamed maker. In the 1800s, many wealthy Native American, Spanish, and Mexican families kept Native servants; Navajo women and children were captured and enslaved because of their knowledge and skill in caring for sheep and working with wool. This blanket's weaver was likely kidnapped as a child or adolescent and lived and worked in a Hispanic household in southern Colorado.</p> |
| 01.24.02 | <p>Navajo textiles were multifunctional and could be used as clothing, blankets, door coverings, rugs, and wall decorations. While this example is labeled as a blanket, it could have fulfilled any of these functions. The intricate symmetrical patterns and colors reflect the Navajo concepts of Hózhó, the sacred beauty and balance between the human, natural, and spirit worlds. They also create an optical illusion, with the geometric patterns of diamonds, serrated diamonds, and stars rising above the field of red.</p> |
| A238 | <p>Made by the Baule peoples of Africa's Ivory Coast in the late 19th or early 20th century, this door probably stood at the entrance to a village courtyard. It is uncertain whether the motifs on the front—two birds, two crocodiles, and a mask—have symbolic significance or are purely decorative. Few of these doors still exist today; this piece is a rare example.</p> |
| A239 | <p>Renoir created this sculpture in 1916 to commemorate his wife, Aline Charigot Renoir, who had died the year before. The piece is based on a painting Renoir made decades earlier, in 1886, showing Aline nursing the couple's first son. Because Renoir suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and had limited use of his hands, sculpture was an especially difficult medium for him. He enlisted the help of a young sculptor named Richard Guino, who worked with Renoir to create the piece you see here.</p> |
| 01.24.18 | <p>This tapestry was designed by Spanish artist Joan Miró and woven by a workshop in Aubusson, France. Its netlike pattern of balletic figures and crescent moons, floating on a hazy background, echoes the weave of the tapestry and evokes the sets that Miró was concurrently designing for the Ballets Russes. <em>Rhythmic Figures</em> was commissioned by the French-Algerian entrepreneur Marie Cuttoli, who supported European artists and workshops during the Great Depression by introducing products such as this tapestry to the American art market.</p> |
| A230 | <p>This figure dates to the 16th century. It was made by an artist working for the king (Oba) of Benin, an empire that flourished in present-day Nigeria from around 1400 until 1897, when it was sacked by British forces. Works of cast copper alloy, like this example, documented life at court and glorified the power and wealth of the Oba. The figure may represent either a priest or messenger. Research commissioned by the Barnes Foundation has revealed that Standing Male Figure was looted by British forces during the 1897 punitive expedition. The Barnes has since joined the Digital Benin Project and is exploring ethical ways to move forward regarding this work.</p> |
| 01.24.17 | <p>With its modern frame and antique tapestry covers, this armchair represents a broader network of decorative arts created for a new American market. The Duveen Brothers—an art and antique firm—regularly partnered with local and international artisans to create reproductions of early furniture styles. The illustration depicts two fashionable men in the middle of a commercial transaction. One man bends over to inspect the goods for purchase while the seated figure proudly displays his table stand.</p> |
| 01.24.49 | <p>Saint Barbara holds objects that help tell her story: the tower refers to the one in which she was imprisoned, and the feather symbolizes her birthplace of Heliopolis in Egypt. Created in France during the late Gothic period, this small sculpture could have been placed on a church altarpiece or pulpit to encourage worship. It might also have been made as an architectural embellishment.</p> |
| 01.24.41 | <p>Saint Katherine of Alexandria (d. c. 305) was a scholarly princess and virgin martyr, and she became very popular in the medieval period as a "holy helper." Here, she holds the spiked wheel by which she was tortured, and the sword by which she was finished. Dr. Barnes purchased this statuette as part of a group that included the equally beloved early Christian saints Antony Abbot, James, and Barbara, also displayed on this balcony. Likely they once featured in a church's interior, perhaps on a pulpit or on a large sacrament house.</p> |
| 01.24.08 | <p>In Diné tradition, Spider Woman and Spider Man created the loom, each part of which symbolizes an aspect of the universe or life. The deities also taught humans the skill of weaving. This bright orange-red serape (a blanket for wearing) was woven for a woman or child from a mix of handspun and "Germantown" yarn (produced commercially in wool mills around the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and then shipped to Native reservations). The serape is decorated with a pattern of serrated rounded diamonds.</p> |
| 01.24.05 | <p>In Diné tradition, Spider Woman and Spider Man created the loom, each part of which symbolizes an aspect of the universe or life. The deities also taught humans the skill of weaving. This serape (a blanket for wearing) is made of handspun wool dyed a vibrant orange-red and is decorated with an allover "eye dazzler" lozenge pattern of white and indigo. The zigzag motifs within the lozenges probably represent lightning.</p> |
| BF817 | <p>This composition of children playing instruments against a pastoral landscape reveals Davies's eclecticism. As a former illustrator, the artist favored a limited color palette as well as strong contrasts between highlights and shadows. The warm hues, idyllic setting, and focus on female figures likely stemmed from Davies's interest in the Pre-Raphaelites. Moreover, the work's subject matter demonstrates his documented fascination for the connections between art and music. In 1895, for instance, he was quoted as saying that "painting is like music."</p> |
| 01.24.06 | <p>The brightly colored threads in this small wearing blanket were manufactured in industrial spinning mills in Germantown, Philadelphia. Germantown knitting yarns were supplied to Navajos by 1870, after the US Army destroyed the tribe's lands and sheep and interned them at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, which became known as Hwéeldi (place of suffering) by the Navajo. Respinning the synthetically dyed yarns, resilient Navajo weavers created blankets with new combinations of bright colors.</p> |
| A231 | <p>Carved from a block of marble, this sculpture depicts a hairy male figure with a potbelly. He holds a wineskin under his left arm, which suggests that he is a satyr, one of the mischievous attendants of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Likely made from the skin of a panther or lion, his cape drapes diagonally across his torso, ending with the head of the animal perched above his left shoulder.</p> |
| BF771 | <p>Markand Bhatt moved from Mumbai, India, to study at the Barnes Foundation in the late 1940s. Dr. Barnes purchased this glazed ceramic figurine of a blue-skinned woman directly from Bhatt in 1948. The figure wears golden earrings, orange bands around her bust and arms, and a green-and-yellow skirt. Her twisting, swaying posture recalls a dancing Hindu deity as well as the spiral design in the iron lock plate displayed below. While Bhatt's figurine does not bear the identifying attributes of a particular deity, her blue skin symbolizes a divine association with the expanses of sea and sky.</p> |
| BF1019 | <p>Painted in New Mexico, this small religious scene, or retablo, was meant for private devotion in a chapel or home. Retablos typically depict saints, angels, or, as here, the Virgin Mary. Holding the Christ Child, the Virgin wears a large cloak that envelops both figures, underscoring her role as protector. The New Mexican painters who specialized in these subjects were called <em>santeros</em>. To develop their iconographies, <em>santeros</em> looked to a variety of printed materials, including woodcuts, pamphlets, and illustrated Bibles.</p> |
| 01.18.30 | <p>This is a rare piece from the workshop of Michael Braun, a celebrated Pennsylvania German cabinetmaker; look for his daughter's name painted on the front. </p> |
| A218 | <p>Spoons and other cutlery were not typically used in African societies, where it was common to eat with one's hands. This example, made by a Guro carver from the Ivory Coast, features a carved head with bull or antelope horns. It was likely made by an apprentice wood carver for practice or was an example piece by a master carver. Carved wooden spoons largely disappeared in the Guro culture after the introduction of metal and then plastic spoons in the mid-20th century.</p> |
| A13 | <p>This small terracotta statuette depicts a woman seated on a backless chair. She wears gauzy wrap called a himation. The pose and style of this object are closely related to a group of similar sculptures known as the "Tanagra Figurines," named after an archaeological site in Boeotia, Greece. These Tanagra types were enormously popular with collectors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which led to a growing market for reproductions and outright forgeries. It is possible that our example is one of these modern fabrications.</p> |
| BF1056b | <p>Painted in an elegant style associated with artists working in Paris during the 1300s, these two diminutive images are probably fragments of the same Gradual—the principal choir book used in the Mass. Scribe lines for musical notation are faintly visible at the images' margins. At left, a priest stands at an altar and raises the consecrated Eucharistic Host ; an acolyte behind him holds an enormous candle. At right, an enthroned king discourses with five other men. He is probably King David, author of the Psalms, which were routinely chanted at Mass.</p> |
| A102 | <p>The pyxis is a type of vessel found in the Attica region of Greece, usually in the graves of women. They were used for holding jewelry, cosmetics, and other small items. This orange, wheel-thrown pyxis dates to the Geometric Period: its large, round body is decorated with hatched triangles, scales, and swastikas (in this context, a symbol of good fortune). The horses on the lid are handmade—one bears the fingerprint of the maker—and were perhaps included as symbols of the owner's wealth and power.</p> |
| A98a | <p>Many of the bone objects in this box seem to have been inlays for one or more ivory caskets, which could be used as receptacles for religious objects or for private use as cosmetic containers. This inlay depicts a young nude boy holding a staff, while a larger hand rests on his shoulder. The style and imagery allude to late Roman and early Christian art, and we have other examples of such caskets that share this type of style and imagery.</p> |
| A98b | <p>A number of the inlays in this box depict maenads, "the raving ones," who were female followers of the Greek and Roman god of wine, Dionysos. Maenads and their male counterparts, the half-man, half-goat satyrs, were popular subjects in both Greek and Roman art, and they were often depicted together playing musical instruments, dancing, drinking, and getting up to general debauchery. This maenad can be seen in the throws of a dance, rattling a tambourine above her shoulder.</p> |
| A98c | <p>The function of this disc is very hard to determine without knowing its original context. Perhaps it was an applique, a small decorative ornament sewn onto a garment or piece of clothing. It may have also been inlaid into a small box or casket, much like the other inlays in this box.</p> |
| A98d | <p>Nereids were sea nymphs, spirits of the ocean waters, and were generally seen to be benevolent to humankind. This nereid is nude except for a billowing garment that winds around her neck and between her legs. She seems to be swimming, with her body extended and suspended and her arms and hands pointed in a kind of diving posture. Around her are swirling waves or currents of water.</p> |
| A98e | <p>The function of this disc is very hard to determine without knowing its original context. Perhaps it was an applique, a small decorative ornament sewn onto a garment or piece of clothing. It may have also been inlaid into a small box or casket, much like the other inlays in this box.</p> |
| A98f | <p>Like the other maenad inlays in this box, this maenad wears a chiton, a Greek style of loose, flowing garment worn by both men and women. Because these garments were loose, they were perfect for depicting motion in art. If you look at the lower portion of the chiton, you can see how movement lines capture the billowing cloth, helping us to visualize the frenzied dancing of the maenad as she shakes her tambourine.</p> |
| A98g | <p>The long, curly locks of this male figure suggest that he could be either the Greek and Roman sun god, Apollo, or Dionysos, the god of wine. Both gods were known for their long, curly hairstyles. But this figure's hair falls down to his shoulders, which is more common in depictions of Dionysos. The frequent depiction of maenads, the followers of Dionysos, as subjects in these groups of inlays is further indication that this is a Dionysos.</p> |
| A98h | <p>The frenzied nature of Dionysian festivals and rituals is perfectly illustrated in this inlay, which depicts a maenad lost in the throes of a dance. She raises her arm over her head and throws her head back as her chiton garment billows around her. Drinking, music, and dancing were important parts of Dionysian festivals, and the action of this inlay highlights the wild and drunken nature of these parties.</p> |
| A98i | <p>Crocodiles were widely associated with the marshy delta and riverbanks of the river Nile across cultures in the Mediterranean. Crocodiles appear in wall paintings and mosaics in both Greek and Roman houses, and so even this small figurine would have inspired images of the Egyptian landscape to ancient audiences.</p> |
| A98j | <p>These two objects are two halves of a musical instrument called a clapper (though each belonged to a different clapper). Carved in the shape of hands, they produce a sound similar to clapping when hit together. The instruments were used in religious rituals and festivals, emphasized on this example by the carved face of the goddess Hathor, who was associated with music. They were used with other instruments such as sistrums (rattles), lutes, harps, pipes, and drums, and they accompanied singing and dancing as well.</p> |
| A98k | <p>This hairpin features a female head with an elaborate upswept hairstyle, which appears to be organized in braided rows. The hairstyle is reminiscent of the elaborate and exaggerated hairstyles worn by Roman women during the first-century AD reign of the emperor Flavian, but this likely dates to a later era, the Byzantine Period. The depiction of an elaborate hairstyle probably references the fact that this hairpin would have been used in constructing just such hairstyles for the owner.</p> |
| A98l | <p>These two objects are two halves of a musical instrument called a clapper (though each belonged to a different clapper). Carved in the shape of hands, they produce a sound similar to clapping when hit together. The instruments were used in religious rituals and festivals, emphasized on this example by the carved face of the goddess Hathor, who was associated with music. They were used with other instruments such as sistrums (rattles), lutes, harps, pipes, and drums, and they accompanied singing and dancing as well.</p> |
| A98m | <p>This inlay features a herm, which is a bust attached to a larger, usually squared, pillar. The name comes from the fact that these usually featured the messenger god Hermes, who might be depicted on this inlay. The figure wears a headpiece that could be Hermes's helmet. However, herms are usually large monumental sculptures, and it is unclear why this would be an inlay and what type of object it would be attached to.</p> |
| A98n | <p>Tyche, or Fortuna, was a Roman and Greek goddess who was responsible for good fortune. Her associations with bounty and prosperity can be seen in her bare breast, symbolizing fertility, and the cornucopia and wreath that she holds in her hands. Both of these illustrate natural bounty: the cornucopia was usually full of fruit and the wreath was assumed to be made from flowers and lush vegetation.</p> |
| A98o | <p>The positioning of the arms, one covering the chest and the other the pubic area, suggests that this figure represents the Greek goddess of love and sexuality, Aphrodite. The carver could have been alluding to the famous Aphrodite of Knidos, one of the earliest nude statues of a goddess made by a Greek artist, created in the 4th century BC. The carving of this inlay is much cruder, with most of the features done through simple lines, than its inspiration.</p> |
| A98p | <p>This nude figure almost certainly draws on the Greek heroic model, as he has a well-defined chest and a body that is muscular and lean. His left hand rests on the circular shield wielded by Greek hoplite soldiers, again communicating that this figure is a hero or a soldier from Greek mythology.</p> |
| A98q | <p>This man stands with a slight contrapposto, or counterpoise, a relaxed asymmetrical standing position in which the line of the arms and shoulders contrasts, but balances, with the hips and shoulders. Famously invented by Greek sculptors in the Archaic Period, the pose creates a more natural and relaxed depiction of the body.</p> |
| A98r | <p>This figure has strange proportions, with a large head and a tiny nude body. The positions of the upraised leg, outstretched arm, contorted torso also appear unusual. This could be a flying cherub figure, which would explain the small body and gestures that don't seem to reflect a standing position.</p> |
| A98s | <p>This beardless male figure wears a Roman toga and a careworn expression. His scroll—an emblem of reasoning—probably identifies him as a philosopher. He could be one of Christ's disciples, as art during this era often depicted Christ as a teacher of "true philosophy."</p> |
| 01.01.45a | <p>The hoop arms of this monumental French door knocker emerge from what appears to be a classical architectural pediment, turn in dramatic reverse-curves, and meet in a variant of a bead-and-reel motif. The knocker's robustly sonorous heft complements the airy, elegant tracery of the pear-shaped plate behind, which is molded and pierced into a swirl of leafy vines. Albert Barnes believed that this was from the 12th century, but its classicizing details suggest a date in the 18th century.</p> |
Total records that do not have an associated image: 15. Any records that have no image and no ensemble index have been filtered out from this table
| Invno # | Ensemble Index |
|---|---|
| 01.02.07 | 5 |
| 01.03.50a | 12 |
| 01.03.50b | 12 |
| 01.03.50c | 12 |
| 01.08.26 | 30 |
| 01.13.39 | 50 |
| BF689 | 80 |
| A98 | 57 |
| BF792fr | 16 |
| 01.11.53b | 43 |
| 01.11.59b | 43 |
| 01.11.70 | 43 |
| BF1056 | 62 |
| BF1158 | 65 |
| 01.11.71 | 43 |
Total records: 0
| Invno # | Associated Provenance Text |
|---|
Total records: 0
| Invno # | Associated Exhibition History Text |
|---|