{"id":2102,"date":"2012-04-02T07:59:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T11:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=2102"},"modified":"2012-05-16T11:28:47","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T15:28:47","slug":"april-2-1912-barnes-unpacks-his-first-shipment-of-french-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2012\/04\/april-2-1912-barnes-unpacks-his-first-shipment-of-french-art\/","title":{"rendered":"April 2, 1912: Barnes Unpacks His First Shipment of French Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
\n\"Purchase <\/a> \"View <\/a>The now-demolished Youth Study Center and current site of the Barnes Foundation,
\n2020 Pennsylvania Avenue. Photograph by Francis Balionis, June 18, 1952.<\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cI know what you have,\u201d William Glackens told Albert C. Barnes of his first stabs at art acquisition. It\u2019s an \u201cordinary rich man\u2019s collection.\u201d You spent thousands of dollars and \u201cthey are stinging you as they do everybody who has money to spend.\u201d Forget your \u201cfuzzy Corots,\u201d said Glackens, put them in the \u201cattic\u201d and \u201cstart over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barnes, the chemist-physician-manufacturer of a medicine that prevented infant blindness had set out to cure another \u00a0blindness\u2014the kind that afflicts rich collectors with no vision. Barnes tracked down Glackens, a former classmate from Central High School who had, only a few years before, broken into the New York City art scene as one of \u201cThe Eight\u201d\u2014a group of realists with a distinctly populist edge. In Glackens, Barnes had someone he could trust: not a dealer, but an old friend an “eye” who could help him unlearn his rich man\u2019s collecting habits and start him assembling art that actually meant<\/em> something.<\/p>\n

What kind of a vision did Barnes have in mind? \u201cI want to buy some good modern paintings,\u201d he wrote Glackens early in 1912. And Barnes had the funds to set up an unusual experiment. He sent his old friend to Paris with $20,000 (the equivalent of almost half a million in today\u2019s dollars) on an open-ended art buying trip. Glackens knew Paris a little, but he\u00a0hadn’t\u00a0been there for more than a decade, since he quit his job as an illustrator in Philadelphia to go on a bicycle trip through Northern France, Belgium, and Holland. So he turned to Alfred (Alfy) Maurer, an American painter living in Paris, who, as Glackens put it in a letter to his wife just after his arrival, \u201cis going to introduce me to a Mr. Stein, a man who collects Renoirs, Matisse, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

They got right to work. Three days later, Glackens wrote home: \u201cI have been all through the dealers places and have discovered that Mr. Barnes will not get as much for his money as he expects. \u2026 Hunting up pictures is not child\u2019s play. Poor Alfy is about worn out.\u201d But less than two weeks later, by March 1, Glackens had completed his mission. \u201cI sail tomorrow,\u201d he wrote, \u201ceverything is settled up here and the pictures being boxed. I am mighty glad it is finished and I am sick of looking at pictures and asking prices. \u2026 I will have a devil of a time with the customs people over the pictures. I am loaded down with invoices and consular certificates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was Barnes\u2019 experiment a success? On the eve of his departure from Paris, Glackens wrote: \u201cEverything has been finished up and the pictures are being boxed by a first class packer \u2026 I am bringing you a fine collection of pictures nearly everything I started for.\u201d When the crates fresh from Paris arrived in \u00a0Barnes\u2019s hands on April 2, 1912, he anxiously unpacked his 33 works of art.<\/p>\n

Among the 20 paintings Barnes beheld \u201ca little girl reading a book\u201d<\/a> by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a \u201cbargain\u201d at seven thousand francs ($1,400) that Glackens was particularly proud of. Barnes unpacked his first Paul C\u00e9zanne<\/a>: Toward Mont Sainte-Victoire (Vers la Montagne Sainte-Victoire<\/em>) from the late 1870s; his first Pablo Picasso<\/a>, Young Woman Holding a Cigarette (Jeune femme tenant une cigarette)<\/em> painted in 1901, and his first Vincent Van Gogh<\/a> The Postman<\/em> (Joseph-\u00c9tienne Roulin) from 1889.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have examined the paintings which you bought for me in Paris and I am delighted with them,\u201d Barnes wrote Glackens. But \u00a0not entirely<\/em> delighted. By outsourcing the task of buying, Barnes had forfeited the education of the search and the joy of the hunt. By June, he would go to Paris himself, to work with Alfy, to meet the Steins (Leo and Gertrude), to charm the dealers with his checkbook and build on what Glackens had started. But what Barnes unpacked in those crates one hundred years ago changed his vision and his confidence in collecting. Over time, Barnes would build a collection of 180 more Renoirs, 68 more C\u00e9zannes, 45 more Picassos and 6 more Van Goghs. And much, much more.<\/p>\n

In Paris, Barnes would tackle something that Glackens did not\u2014the world created by the new wave of modernists. \u201cArt is in a strange state at present among the youth,\u201d Glackens warned Barnes. \u201cI confess that lots of things I have seen over here are incomprehensible to me as art.\u201d Barnes took Glackens\u2019 words as a challenge. In Paris, he made his way to those who created this \u201cincomprehensible\u201d art and bought some of\u00a0that, too. Barnes would, in short order, make his way from art\u2019s cutting edge to its bleeding edge.<\/p>\n

In its own time, so would Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

[Note<\/strong>: \u00a0For more on the Barnes Foundation at the site of the Youth Study Center, read another post at PhillyHistory published May 15, 2012: What\u2019s Wrong With Philadelphia\u2019s \u201cMuseum Mile\u201d?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The now-demolished Youth Study Center and current site of the Barnes Foundation, 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue. Photograph by Francis Balionis, June 18, 1952. \u201cI know what you have,\u201d William Glackens told Albert C. Barnes of his first stabs at art acquisition. It\u2019s an \u201cordinary rich man\u2019s collection.\u201d You spent thousands of dollars and \u201cthey are stinging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}