Albert C. Barnes Correspondence
1902-1951

A Guide

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

[Description of item], [date]. Presidents' Files, Albert C. Barnes Correspondence. The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, Pennsylvania. Reprinted with permission.

Acquisition Information

These records were housed in the storage area of the Barnes Foundation’s administration building.

Processed By

Barbara Anne Beaucar, Laurie Palumbo, Katy Rawdon, and Jason Stieber. Finding aid written by Barbara Anne Beaucar, November 2007.

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This collection is open for research to qualified researchers by appointment only. Please contact the Archives and Library Department for information on access and research.

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The Albert C. Barnes Correspondence files are the physical property of the Barnes Foundation Archives. The Foundation holds literary rights only for material created by staff of the Foundation and material given to the Foundation with such rights specifically assigned. For all other material, literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. Researchers are responsible for determining the identity of rights holders and obtaining their permission for publication and for other purposes where stated.

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Biographical Note

Albert C. Barnes, ca. 1942. Photograph by Pinto Studios.

Albert C. Barnes (1872 – 1951) professed a lifelong interest in education, not only for himself, but for those less fortunate around him, and for the public in general. Both a scientist and an entrepreneur, Barnes developed and marketed Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound. The fortune earned from this medicine’s global distribution allowed Barnes to realize his ideals and create the Barnes Foundation, an institution established “to promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts.”

FAMILY

Barnes was born in Philadelphia on January 2, 1872, the third son of Lydia A. Schaffer (1846 – 1912) and John J. Barnes (1844 – 1930). Barnes described his father as a man with “good intelligence and tremendous energy” but lacking in balance.(1) During the Civil War, John Barnes enlisted in Company D of the 82nd Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers. After the war, he found work as a letter carrier and met Lydia A. Schaffer, a woman of Pennsylvania German descent and a devout Methodist. They married on April 4, 1867. Barnes said that his mother was marvelous, “endowed with a keen, penetrating intelligence…but best of all, she had poise and balance.”(2) Lydia Barnes has been credited for being the motivating force in Barnes’s early life. She took him to Methodist camp meetings in New Jersey, an experience that Barnes acknowledged as the source of his affinity for African American art and culture, especially music.(3)

EDUCATION

In 1885, when Barnes was thirteen years old, he enrolled in Philadelphia’s Central High School. Central High School was founded in 1838, the second public high school in the nation. Because of its high academic standards, the Pennsylvania Assembly granted the school the “same and like power to confer degrees, honorary and otherwise” as possessed by the University of Pennsylvania. Barnes first met artist William J. Glackens (1870 – 1938) at Central High School, where he claimed that they became friends through their common interest in sports – the two played baseball for the school team. Barnes also took a serious interest in Glackens’s drawings, an interest that would eventually rekindle their friendship twenty years later. During his third year at Central, the Barnes family moved away from the “Neck,” a particularly rough section of South Philadelphia, to 1331 Tasker Street. Barnes delivered newspapers for the Philadelphia Ledger where his father worked in the circulation department.(4) He completed eight consecutive semesters at Central, served as vice-president of his senior class, and, in June of 1889, graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree.

In 1889, Barnes matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and graduated three years later with an M.D. degree at the age of twenty. Following his internships at the Polyclinic Hospital in Philadelphia and Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh,(5) Barnes worked for two years as a demonstrator of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. However, to finance his continued work in chemistry, Barnes claimed that he held a variety of unusual jobs until he had finally saved enough money to travel to Germany and attend the University of Berlin.(6)

Barnes traveled twice to study and work in Germany. From 1894 – 1895, he studied physiological chemistry at the University of Berlin, and also worked as a sales agent for an American stove company. Upon returning to the United States, H.K. Mulford and Company, a pharmaceuticals manufacturer, employed him as an advertising and sales manager. Barnes said that he also tutored, translated, and edited for the next few years while continuing with his own research work.(7) In 1900, H.K. Mulford and Company sent him back to Germany to study pharmacology at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat in Heidelberg. Barnes wrote and published his Doctor’s Arbeit on morphine derivatives in one year, and also recruited German chemist Hermann Hille to work for the company.

LAURA L. BARNES

Barnes returned home to Philadelphia late in the summer of 1900 and, while vacationing with his cousin in Milford, Pennsylvania, met his future wife, Laura Leggett (1875 – 1966). She was born in Brooklyn, New York, the fifth child of six children born to Richard Lee and Clara Cox Leggett. Her father, who had also served in the Civil War in New York City’s 7th Regiment, owned a successful wholesale grocery business. Albert C. Barnes and Laura Leggett were married the following spring on June 4, 1901 at St. James Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. They sailed to Europe on their honeymoon, first visiting the university that Barnes attended in Heidelberg, and continuing on through the Black Forest to Switzerland and Italy. The couple purchased their first home at 6374 Drexel Road in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia.

BARNES AND HILLE

Although H.K. Mulford and Company employed both Barnes and Herman Hille, the two men worked together privately to develop Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound which proved beneficial in the treatment of eye inflammations, especially in infants. In 1902, they resigned their positions at H.K. Mulford and Company and organized their own partnership, Barnes and Hille. Barnes handled the sales and marketing, leaving Hille in charge of the laboratory located at 24 North 40th Street in Philadelphia. Barnes employed both of his parents. His mother, Lydia A. Barnes, kept the books, and his father, John J. Barnes, worked as the company watchman.

In 1902, Barnes and Hille also perfected the formula for Ovoferrin, an easily assimilated salt of iron. Barnes found international distribution for Argyrol and Ovoferrin through Fassett & Johnson Company with offices in London, England and Sydney, Australia. Due to Barnes’s business acumen, the company’s earnings steadily increased over the next few years, and were further enhanced by an absence of global competition. Argyrol was simply trade-marked, never patented, which would have revealed the medicine’s formula. Only Hermann Hille knew the secret.

As early as December of 1905, Barnes expressed his dissatisfaction with Hille’s job performance but, by 1907, the partnership truly began to fail. In a letter to Hille, Barnes said, “I do not concede that you have been an ‘equal partner,’ in reality, in this business, judged from your acts and other tangible evidence.”(8) He instructed Hille to send all further communications to his lawyer, John G. Johnson (1841 – 1917), and demanded of Hille that he divulge the “formulae, methods and processes of all the investigations, inventions and discoveries made by [him] from April 30, 1903 up to the present date.”(9) Johnson sent Barnes a copy of the partnership’s dissolution in September of 1908.

A.C. BARNES COMPANY

The demise of Barnes’s partnership with Hermann Hille launched his new business, A.C. Barnes Company. Equipped with the knowledge of Argyrol’s formula, his company enjoyed continued success, offering Barnes and his wife the opportunity to advance their standard of living. The couple had already built their second home, “Lauraston,” named for Mrs. Barnes, on Union Avenue (now North Latch’s Lane) in Merion, Pennsylvania, in 1905. Barnes hunted with the Pickering Hunt, the Chester Valley Hunt Club, and the Rose Tree Fox Hunting Club. In 1910, he established the “Lauraston Cup,” a trophy for the Rose Tree Races.

There is still speculation regarding the source of Barnes’s passion for art. He said that in the years following his honeymoon, he returned to vacation in Europe every summer, went to “big galleries, to various exhibitions of contemporary painting and to the dealers,” and bought some paintings simply “because [he] liked them.”(10) Barnes’s subsequent interest in the study of art, “especially as it related to education,” led to a resumption of his friendship with William Glackens in 1910. Barnes said, “I spent many days in his studio and he came frequently to my house to visit me and discuss the paintings I had accumulated.”(11) In the winter of 1912, Barnes sent Glackens to Paris to scout the galleries for paintings. Accompanied by Alfred Henry Maurer (1868 – 1932), his friend and fellow member of the American Ashcan School, Glackens bought approximately twenty works of art.

Barnes traveled to Paris himself in June of 1912. After returning home, he asked Maurer to continue to “be on the lookout for paintings of the character which I desire, namely, good examples of works by Maner [sic], Daumier, Ingres, Bazille, Goya, and such other of the masters who are not yet represented in my collection.”(12) Barnes also suggested a business relationship to Maurer, offering him compensation of two hundred and fifty francs per month to help market Argyrol in France. When Barnes visited France again in December of 1912, he met collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein and purchased his first two paintings by Henri Matisse. This marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship and correspondence between Barnes and Leo Stein (1862 – 1947).

Meanwhile, the A.C. Barnes Company prospered. Barnes organized the business as a cooperative, encouraging personal growth and a spirit of mutual respect among his employees. It inspired such efficiency that the factory work could be completed in six hours, leaving the remaining two hours of the day devoted to seminars for the workers. Comprised of nine individuals, the staff included white women and African American men of various ages and levels of education. Barnes had hired Nelle E. Mullen (1884 – 1967), while she was still in her teens, to be the company’s bookkeeper and, later, brought her older sister Mary Mullen (1875 – 1957) into the company. When he stated that “one of the women, who had a flair for psychology,” led the seminars, it was most likely Mary Mullen to whom he referred. The workers read and discussed the pragmatic writings of William James and John Dewey. George Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty (1896) provoked an interest in art and creative imagination to which Barnes responded by hanging paintings from his collection in the factory building. These afternoon seminars eventually resulted in the publication of Mary Mullen’s book, An Approach to Art (1923).

Though the war in Europe suspended travel to France to buy art, Barnes continued to collect his favorite American artists, William J. Glackens, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast. He remained vigorously interested in art and philosophy, writing two essays in 1915, “How to Judge a Painting” published in Arts and Decoration and one on cubism, “Cubism: Requiescat in Pace.” While Barnes spent weekday afternoons discussing books and paintings with his employees, he and Mrs. Barnes devoted their Sundays to the performing arts at “Lauraston.” Violinist Vasilii Vasilévich Bezekirskii performed sonatas by Franck, Mozart, Beethoven and Lalo accompanied by pianist Jean Verd. Barnes even purchased a certified Francesco Ruggieri violin from the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company for Besekirskii to play when in Merion. Usually, a small number of guests were invited to enjoy these musicales, some quite distinguished such as Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and American philosopher and educator John Dewey.

In the fall of 1917, Barnes enrolled in a post-graduate philosophy seminar taught by John Dewey (1859 – 1952) at Columbia University. The class consisted of ten students, each encouraged by Dewey to express their opinions in the form of a round-table discussion. Barnes said that, “since the death of William James, Dewey has been the unquestioned head of American philosophic thought, and he is simple, plain, penetrating, inspiring and intensely interesting.”(13) Barnes and Dewey became close friends and confidants, their friendship and correspondence eventually spanning more than three decades. In his book, Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey asserted that while complex societies require the kind of formal education that institutions provide, this type of learning separates students from a direct experience with life. Inspired by Dewey, and with the encouragement of Dewey’s wife, Alice, Barnes decided to expand his factory seminars into a more advanced experiment in education.

THE BARNES FOUNDATION

On October 13, 1922, Barnes purchased “Red-Slates,” the Joseph Lapsley Wilson (1844 – 1928) estate situated on a fifteen acre arboretum near his home on Latch’s Lane. He received a charter from State of Pennsylvania on December 4, 1922, to establish the Barnes Foundation, an educational institution dedicated to promoting the appreciation of fine art and arboriculture. Barnes hired architect Paul Philippe Cret (1876 – 1945) to design a residence and a gallery on the arboretum grounds. He immersed himself in every step of the construction, from the selection of the building stone, Pouillenay and Coutarnoux, shipped by steamer from France, to decisions regarding interior wall coverings. Barnes complained that Cret’s exterior façade designs looked like “bull’s eyes” and replaced them with bas-relief sculptures commissioned from artist Jacques Lipchitz (1891 – 1973). He engaged the Enfield Pottery and Tile Works to create the ceramic tiles for the front portico of the gallery building, selecting both the tile colors and the insets of African design elements such as the mask and crocodile motif from the Ivory Coast Baule door (A238) in his collection.

Dr. Barnes acquired his vast collection of African art from Paris art dealer Paul Guillaume (1891 – 1934). He most likely met Guillaume upon resuming his visits to France after the First World War, and the two soon developed a friendly business relationship. Guillaume became Barnes’s principle agent in Paris, handling purchases and exchanges with other dealers and eventually being named the Foundation’s “Foreign Secretary.” In 1923, while the Foundation buildings were under construction, Barnes organized an exhibition of his acquisitions of African art and Modern paintings at Guillaume’s gallery in Paris. The Modern paintings, which were well received in France, unfortunately met with contempt from the Philadelphia press when they were exhibited in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in April of that year.

Both Barnes and Guillaume published essays about the influence of African sculpture on the Modern movement in art, a view that attracted the interest of notable African Americans such as Howard University professor Alain Locke (1886 – 1954) and social activist Charles S. Johnson (1893 – 1956). In early 1924, Johnson invited Barnes to a party in New York for young African American writers after which they discussed providing scholarships for some to study African art. Barnes devised an educational program, the “New Plan for Negro Education,” an idea which Charles S. Johnson proposed to James Weldon Johnson of the N.A.A.C.P.(14) Barnes contributed to and became a lifetime member of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, directed by Carter G. Woodson,(15) and donated generously – and anonymously – to the National Urban League in support of their journal, Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, edited by Charles S. Johnson.

While Barnes continued to manage the A.C. Barnes Company, to direct all aspects of the construction of the Barnes Foundation buildings, and to collect remarkable works of art, he also began working on a book that would become the primary text used in the Foundation’s educational program. Barnes hired his former tutor, philosophy professor Laurence Buermeyer (1889 – 1970), to help with the structure of the book, one he believed would be the first of its kind that “endeavored to attach the flesh and blood of practical experience with paintings and with plain people.”(16) Barnes and Buermeyer shared common intellectual interests – Barnes attended John Dewey’s seminars at Buermeyer’s suggestion – and their relationship, while often troubled, remained constant over the years. Once Buermeyer completed the work of organizing notes and editing drafts, he made yet another important suggestion to Barnes. He said, “I like 'The Art in Painting' better than 'New Pictures from Old' as a title for the book… .”(17) The Art in Painting (1925) was published just weeks before the Barnes Foundation’s official opening.

Days after the Foundation first received its charter in 1922, Barnes expressed the idea of working with area colleges to develop a synthesis of the philosophies of Dewey and Santayana, an adaptation for the average student. He asked Laurence Buermeyer to provide further clarification to students visiting the Gallery because he thought him to be “the best qualified intellectually to carry out the plan.”(18) However, it was philosophy professor Thomas Munro (1897 – 1974) who taught the first classes beginning in 1924, one offered through the University of Pennsylvania and the other at Columbia University. Painter Sara Carles, daughter of Philadelphia artist Arthur B. Carles, joined Mary Mullen on the teaching staff, and Barnes himself began speaking for two hours in front of the paintings on Fridays and Sundays. Also in the spring of that year, Barnes published the first Journal of the Barnes Foundation, featuring articles by Buermeyer, Mary Mullen, and Munro.

The Barnes Foundation officially opened on March 19, 1925, with a celebration that took place on “a beautiful sunshiny afternoon… [with] some two hundred people present.”(19) John Dewey, whom Barnes asked to serve as “honorary” director of education, gave the first address. He noted that the Foundation’s focus was, in fact, a culmination of Barnes’s enduring interest in education, an extension of the experimental classes held in the laboratories of A.C. Barnes Company, and he also emphasized Barnes’s continued commitment to African Americans and “every-day people.”(20) When Barnes asked Leopold Stokowski to speak on behalf of all artists, he explained why:

It is that plain, ordinary person, with little schooling, whom we want to teach to use the qualities of mind, heart, and soul, with which he has been endowed by nature, in such a way that he will be able to understand what the thinkers have done and what the artists have done. That is the main idea of the Foundation."(21)

Stokowski said, “I will do it because I believe in your idea.”(22)

DR. BARNES AND MUSIC

When Barnes introduced music to his Sunday afternoon talks – reminiscent of the Sunday musicales at “Lauraston” – it emphasized Buermeyer’s assertion that art was only one manifestation of the Foundation’s interest in total human development. Barnes said, “It’s amazing how close are the affiliations between music and paintings,”(23) and, with recordings, demonstrated the kinship between Mozart and Prendergast, Beethoven and Cézanne, Gluck and Renoir, and Picasso and African American spirituals. He must have welcomed the opportunity to introduce his students to spirituals, music he clearly loved. Barnes said, “When I was about eight years old, I went to a negro camp meeting and have never recovered from the thrill.”(24) In 1926, the Barnes Foundation began hosting an annual concert of African American spirituals sung by the Bordentown Choir of New Jersey’s Manual Training and Industrial School for Youth.

Charles S. Johnson first introduced Barnes to the Bordentown Choir and their beloved and respected musical director, Frederick J. Work (1880 – 1942), while arranging a speaking engagement for Barnes at the Women’s Faculty Club of Columbia University. The talk included lantern slides of African art accompanied by the singing of spirituals. Later that evening, Barnes and his wife, Laura, and Paul Guillaume joined Johnson for dinner and an evening of cabaret jazz music in Harlem. Barnes enjoyed the “Harlem spree,”(25) but found the spirituals sung by Work’s choir far more captivating. He included Laurence Buermeyer’s essay, “Negro Spirituals and American Art,” as one of five contracted articles for a special issue of Opportunity devoted to art, along with his own essay, “Negro Art, Past and Present.”

THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

In the years following the opening of the Foundation, Barnes experienced both the sweetness of success as well as the sting of disappointment. In April of 1926, the Republic of France awarded him the cross of the Legion of Honor; however, that year also marked an end to a brief collaboration between the Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. Mostly due to a declining student enrollment, Barnes suspended both Thomas Munro’s course, “Fine Arts V: Modern Art” as well as Laurence Buermeyer’s lectures on the “Aesthetic Experience.” The University’s inability to accept his advice on the structure of the classes also drove Barnes’s decision to continue the Foundation’s educational program on his own. He replaced Munro with two Foundation employees, Jeanette Portenar, teaching psychology and aesthetics, and Violette de Mazia (1899 – 1988), conducting demonstrations in the Gallery. De Mazia, hired initially as a French teacher, soon became an invaluable member of the Foundation staff, assisting Barnes with the research and writing of four books, and eventually serving as the Foundation’s director of education and member of the board of trustees.

As the wire services spread the news of the Foundation’s opening, an overwhelming amount of mail arrived from across the nation. In 1925 alone, over one thousand correspondents wrote congratulatory messages or expressed interest in coming to Merion to take classes. Barnes had once declared to his friend John Dewey, “…I’m launched on a bigger ship than I thought I’d ever be called on to steer and I’m going through with it somehow.”(26) Although frustrated by his association with the University of Pennsylvania, Barnes reveled in the success of his “experiment in education” and also in the sales of his book, The Art in Painting (1925).

REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT

As early as 1912, Barnes had begun developing the property along North Latch’s Lane. He contracted Philadelphia architects Druckenmiller, Stackhouse & Williams to design an estate home on a portion of the property belonging to the Marston family across the street from “Lauraston” on Latch’s Lane. By 1913, Barnes had also purchased property from the Latch family to build four more homes on Latch’s Lane bordering the northeast corner of Old Lancaster Avenue. Upon taking possession of the Wilson property in 1922, Barnes contracted John H. McClatchy, a local well-known builder of English stone and Tudor style houses, to build two additional homes on Latch’s Lane as well as four houses along Lapsley Lane, one of which became the home of Joseph Lapsley Wilson in his new role as director of the Barnes Foundation Arboretum. By developing the area around the Foundation, Barnes had hoped to create a “park occupied by high-class suburban residences.”(27) The approval, in 1927, of plans to construct one hundred and twenty-six twin style dwellings bordering his property led Barnes to contest the new township zoning allowing such a venture. The dispute, which began with a threat to move his art collection to New York City, culminated in the construction of a stone wall ten feet high and running several hundred feet across the back of the Barnes Foundation property.

In 1929, Barnes decided to sell the A.C. Barnes Company to devote his full attention to the needs of the Barnes Foundation. On July 19, 1929, Zonite Corporation of New York bought the A.C. Barnes Company, maintaining its trademarked names for Argyrol and Ovoferrin. Barnes fortunately made the decision to sell his company just months before the New York stock market crashed in October of that year.

FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS

With A.C. Barnes Company sold, Barnes could dedicate more of his time to writing a series of books in which he stressed the fundamental importance of a systematic study of art, even canceling his Sunday lectures at the Foundation to write about the art of Henri Matisse. Barnes spent summers in Europe conducting research in museums and galleries and taking notes for the books, The French Primitives and Their Forms (1931), The Art of Henri-Matisse (1933), The Art of Renoir (1935), and The Art of Cézanne (1939). Mrs. Barnes accompanied him and his writing team: Violette de Mazia, his co-author, and staff members Nelle Mullen, Mary Mullen, and Laura Geiger. On location at hotel spas such as the Hotel des Thermes, situated in the village of Brides-les-Bains in the foothills of the French Alps, and during the return voyage home, the team compiled, transcribed, and edited their notes, underscoring the collaborative nature of their work on the Foundation’s books.(28)

DECORATIVE ART AND FINE CRAFTS

Dr. Barnes usually traveled twice a year to Europe, visiting galleries and dealers to expand and refine his collection of fine art, but a journey to the American West launched a new interest in collecting fine crafts. Mrs. Barnes, at the suggestion of her doctor, traveled to New Mexico for a few months in the winter of 1929 – 1930. Barnes accompanied his wife and, while she rested, he bought Zuni, Navajo, and Apache turquoise and silver jewelry, pawn jewelry, rugs, santos, Zia, Old Domingo, Santa Anna, Acoma, and San Ildefonso pottery, and Navajo blankets from dealers with such colorful names as La Fonda Indian Shop, Old Santa Fe Trading Post, and Spanish and Indian Trading Company. Barnes found the “eternal sunshine” of the Southwest delightful but seemed to be even more intrigued by the ceremonial dances performed by the indigenous people there. In a letter to artist Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954), he described it as a unique experience and added, “I was sorry you were not with me to see the marvelous spectacle.”(29)

That same year, Matisse also traveled to the American West and, upon his return, asked to visit the Barnes Foundation.(30) Barnes, who first purchased Matisse’s work from Gertrude Stein in 1912, believed Matisse to be the most well informed of all the artists he ever knew and, in Matisse’s work, always found “something that is his own, is not a repetition, and is in line with the traditions.”(31) Their visit culminated in a commission for Matisse to paint a mural to decorate the lunettes above the French windows in the Barnes Foundation Gallery. Matisse, who had never had the opportunity to work on such a large scale before, returned to Nice, France, rented a garage as studio space to accommodate a substantial painting, installed a skylight to mimic the lighting at the Foundation, and created The Dance (2001.25.50). The Barnes Foundation commission revitalized Matisse, inspiring his future artistic production both in terms of scale and materials.

In the 1930s, Barnes’s enthusiasm for Native American fine crafts broadened to include additional acquisitions of Early American decorative art. He purchased Pennsylvania German chests, cupboards, tables, chairs, ironwork, brass, tin, copper, pewter, ceramics, textiles, and glass from local antique dealers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the Gallery, Barnes displayed his collection of ironwork along with the paintings because he thought the patterns observed in fine art reflected those found in wrought iron. He believed the creators of these pieces to be artists, as authentic as Titian or Renoir. By including the iron work in the ensembles, Barnes demonstrated how their patterns also offered a link to what had gone before, something that he attempted to do with paintings – “to show how the modern painters are legitimate successors of the old masters.”(32) Barnes also included furniture in the Gallery for the same purpose – to demonstrate how the earliest prototypes of foreign pieces of furniture had served as points of departure for American craftsmen.

FIDELE DE PORT MANEC’H

By the time that Barnes severed his relations with Paul Guillaume in 1932, he had already established another working friendship with art dealer Georges Keller, director of Etienne Bignou gallery in Paris and Bignou Gallery in New York. Barnes purchased paintings by Moderns such as Matisse and Soutine as well as Cézanne, Seurat, and Renoir through Keller. Barnes expressed his partiality for Keller by giving him a Ford sedan for Christmas and, when Guillaume died in 1934, assigned Keller to his post as “Foreign Secretary” of the Barnes Foundation. Keller introduced Barnes to Port Manec’h, a small fishing village in Brittany, France, where Barnes and his wife vacationed in the years leading up to the Second World War.

While vacationing in Port Manec’h, Barnes befriended Jeanne Guillerm, innkeeper of the hotel Tante Jeanne, launching a friendship that survived language barriers, an ocean, and a world war. Barnes grew so fond of Port Manec’h and its lively Breton inhabitants that he proposed to purchase property there to create a school and cultural center, a haven for artists to work in peace. In 1937, Barnes sent instructions from Merion to Georges Keller in Paris to make an offer on Guillerm’s hotel and, also, to take two hundred francs and buy a mongrel puppy that he had met in Port Manec’h the summer before. Barnes thought he was “a wonderful dog, … neglected there, and … worthy of a better home.”(33) Although Keller’s negotiations to buy the hotel proved unsuccessful, in early 1938 he bought passage on a steamer sailing from La Havre for himself and one small dog. The dog, Fidèle (1937 – 1951), became Barnes’s constant companion.

KER-FEAL

When Barnes purchased an eighteenth-century field stone farmhouse in 1940, he named it Ker-Feal, Breton for “Fidèle’s House.” Ker-Feal is situated on almost 138 acres of mixed farmland and forest in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Barnes hired the architectural firm of Kneedler, Mirick and Zantzinger to make two additions flanking the main house, an expansion necessary to accommodate his growing collection of American decorative art as well as to provide a “modern” kitchen and personal living space. Barnes intended to create a “living museum of art and to develop a botanical garden,” which would become part of the Foundation’s educational mission.(34) In 1942, the magazine House & Garden devoted an issue to Ker-Feal, featuring articles written by Barnes and Violette de Mazia regarding the educational importance of the collections at both the Foundation and Ker-Feal.(35)

PAMPHLETEERING

Barnes and his staff compiled a number of pamphlets in response to published articles and local events involving the arts and education. In 1938, Barnes published a pamphlet stating the mission for the “Friends of Art and Education,” an organization he launched in response to a published statement comparing the Foundation’s painting Large Bathers (BF934) by Paul Cézanne and one of the same title and artist acquired by the Pennsylvania (now Philadelphia) Museum of Art. The organization published two more pamphlets, Cézanne Bathers at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art and A Disgrace to Philadelphia. In 1942, after the Saturday Evening Post ran a less than flattering four-part series on Barnes entitled “The Terrible Tempered Dr. Barnes,” Barnes countered with the pamphlet, How It Happened, which he advertised and mailed to a national audience. Also in 1942, the board’s decision to terminate English philosopher Bertrand Russell from the Foundation’s teaching staff resulted in a lawsuit brought and won by Russell. To state his side of the case, Barnes published a pamphlet, Bertrand Russell v. Democracy and Education. In 1945, Barnes wrote two pamphlets, Sabotage of Public Education in Philadelphia and Whitewash: Board of Education Style, in response to a brochure published by the Philadelphia Board of Education.

CHARITY

Publicly, Barnes’s belligerent temperament and vituperative language were as renowned as his art collection but, for those who knew him personally, he was a caring man, kind-hearted and exceedingly generous. While records in the Barnes Foundation Archives have uncovered the many anonymous monetary contributions that Barnes made to major organizations over the years, his gifts during the Great Depression of the 1930s were of a more specific nature. He gave generously to organizations such as the Seeing Eye to provide training for guide dogs for the blind, to the Tindley Temple in Philadelphia to provide food for the poor, and commissioned and donated a memorial sculpture of a firefighter to the Narberth Fire Company. At the onset of the Second World War, Barnes offered to support twenty European orphans for the duration and, later, donated crops grown at Ker-Feal to support the war effort. When Barnes, along with many other Americans, became aware of the war’s devastation in Europe, he sent monthly food parcels to his friends in Port-Manec’h, and food and books to Leo and Nina Stein in Italy.

Barnes also continued to support young African American artists and musicians with scholarships to study at the Foundation. At the suggestion of Charles S. Johnson, he admitted artists Gwendolyn Bennett and Aaron Douglas (1898 – 1979) as scholarship students in 1928. Douglas continued to illustrate books and paint murals before leaving to study and work in Paris. Barnes gave scholarships to singers James Boxwill and Florence Owens to study at the Foundation, and also provided funding for violinist David Auld to study at the Juilliard School, and for singer Lillian G. Hall to attend the Westminster Choir College in New Jersey. In 1943, Barnes sent California musician Ablyne Lockhart into the Deep South to become acquainted with “her roots.” Lockhart sent Barnes vivid descriptions of her trip which included transcriptions of the spirituals she heard while visiting St. Helena Island in South Carolina.

Dr. Barnes’s support of African Americans extended beyond the cultural disciplines. As early as 1917, Barnes helped his African American workers buy houses in Philadelphia, later proposing to even build some of them himself. In the early 1930s, he provided a fellowship for Philadelphia physician DeHaven Hinkson to study gynecology in Paris. He also paid for the education of Louis and Gladys Dent, the children of Jeannette M. Dent, widow of an A.C. Barnes Company employee, at the Manual Training and Industrial School for Youth in New Jersey, an example of his abiding commitment to his employees and their families.

LINCOLN UNIVERSITY

In 1947, Barnes made a donation to Lincoln University, a small, historically black college located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to help their most needy students. Barnes and Lincoln’s president, Horace Mann Bond (1904 – 1972), developed a professional yet cordial relationship, one that led the university to offer Barnes a Lectureship in Art at Lincoln. After many failed attempts to form an association with the University of Pennsylvania, Barnes wrote to Bond saying, “I was so overwhelmed with joy and with admiration at the ease with which you disposed of the work and worry that face me in the future, that I danced the cancan.”(36) Despite his enthusiasm for the offer, however, Barnes made a counter proposal: an afternoon class for Lincoln University students at the Foundation. Barnes also amended the Foundation by-laws so that, eventually, Lincoln’s board of trustees would nominate four of the five trustees of the Barnes Foundation. On June 5, 1951, Lincoln University awarded Barnes the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.

On the afternoon of July 24, 1951, with Fidèle sitting at his side, Barnes set out from Ker-Feal for an appointment at the Foundation in Merion. On a rural road in Chester County, a truck slammed into Barnes’s automobile, killing Dr. Barnes instantly and so horribly injuring Fidèle that he had to be put down by a police officer.

Scope and Content

The correspondence of Albert C. Barnes consists of 125.5 linear feet of letters, cards, notes, telegrams, and enclosures such as mailing lists, lecture notes, song sheets, postcards, invitations, exhibition catalogues, drawings, pamphlets, legal papers, news clippings, recipes, and photographs. The order of the correspondence has been maintained as it was found in 2001, arranged chronologically and alphabetically within the year. It is likely that this arrangement is the one used by Dr. Barnes and his staff. Items clearly misfiled or not attached to correspondence such as folders containing only financial receipts or writings have been removed. Because Barnes and his staff saved and filed both letters received as well as carbon copies of Barnes’s responses, they captured historic “conversations,” dialogues that offer a rich insight into the relationships that Barnes maintained with physicians, artists, art dealers, scholars, collectors, publishers, museum directors, and politicians.

The earliest correspondence, which begins in 1902, documents the activities of Barnes’s business partnership, Barnes and Hille. This correspondence includes chemical formulas and letters from physicians, many from abroad, expressing support for the efficacy of Argyrol. Lengthy hand-written letters between Barnes and his partner, Hermann Hille, as well as correspondence with Barnes’s lawyer, John G. Johnson, reveal the details leading up to the dissolution of their partnership in 1908.

Evidence of the success of Barnes’s subsequent business, the A.C. Barnes Company, is found in correspondence with brokerage firms and banks such as N.W. Halsey & Co., the National City Company, the Chatham Phenix National Bank and Trust, and Halsey, Stuart & Co. which includes legal opinions and other financial papers regarding investment bonds, and also in the receipts for expensive automobiles, gifts of fine jewelry, and purchases of silver, clocks, and other select furnishings for his estate, “Lauraston.” Barnes’s long-term financial relationship with the Girard Trust Company began in 1908 and continued until 1950.

Letters, notes, and receipts from artists and dealers provide rich provenance for the acquisition of Barnes’s art collection. Beginning in 1912, the correspondents include artists William J. Glackens, Charles Demuth, Maurice and Charles Prendergast, and Alfred Maurer, and art dealers Durand-Ruel, E. Druet, Etienne Bignou, and M. Knoedler.

Dr. Barnes maintained a long-lived and intense relationship with collector Leo Stein. Their correspondence began in 1912, the same year that Barnes began seriously collecting fine art, and continued until Stein’s death in 1947. Barnes’s relationship with Leo Stein was both professional and personal. In their letters, they shared their views on art, reviewed each other’s writings, and argued intensely – one letter from Stein remains as yet unopened as a result of Barnes’s pique.

The correspondence with American philosopher and educator John Dewey is perhaps the most extensive in the collection. Barnes began writing to Dewey in 1917, a correspondence that continued until Barnes’s death in 1951. Their early letters reflect a formal student/teacher relationship and include discussions about psychology, philosophy, experiments such as the “Polish study” undertaken in Philadelphia in 1918 which examined the social attitudes of an immigrant community, and their own writings as well as those of others. Over the years, the correspondence reveals the growth of a warm friendship replete with humor, travel stories, and gossip about mutual friends. More important, the Barnes/Dewey correspondence contains discussions about their evolving views on education and democracy, the fundamental principles of the Barnes Foundation.

The correspondence from 1922 to 1929 reflects Barnes’s dual role as president of both the Barnes Foundation and his business, the A.C. Barnes Company. Included in this correspondence are tax papers, references to personnel, and also legal papers drawn up by Barnes’s lawyer, future Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, regarding the indenture and by-laws of the Foundation and its original trustees and directors. Barnes and Roberts, who eventually became Chester County neighbors in the 1940s, continued to correspond regarding legal and personal matters until 1950.

The correspondence throughout the 1920s provides comprehensive documentation of the planning for the Barnes Foundation itself: its conception and the construction of its buildings. Barnes’s detailed correspondence with architect Paul Philippe Cret includes the technical aspects of construction such as lists of sub-contractors, cost estimates, discussions regarding building stone and roofing materials, and suggestions for the placement of the Foundation buildings within an established arboretum. Cret’s files also include correspondence between himself and artist Jacques Lipchitz, who created the bas-reliefs decorating the exterior of the buildings, as well as plans and drawings for a tea house, and a graphite and colored pencil drawing of the portico of the Gallery building depicting the African design elements in its tiled decoration.

The activities of the early years of the Barnes Foundation – its staff, teachers and students, educational curriculum, European tours, and book and journal publications – are also well documented in this correspondence. Included are Barnes’s letters to educators and scholars such as Laurence Buermeyer and Thomas Munro. While Buermeyer’s name may not have the same resonance as others who wrote to Barnes, their correspondence from 1915 to 1951 contains letters, notes, copy edited drafts, and re-written chapters, clearly demonstrating his vast contribution to the Foundation’s publications including its primary text, the Art in Painting (1925).

Insight into Barnes’s hopes for the Foundation, and his problems and decisions regarding the construction of the buildings are also found in correspondence with Paris art collector and dealer Paul Guillaume. This correspondence is one of the only collections of Guillaume’s letters extant, spanning ten years beginning in 1922. Their letters, in French and English, cover a wide range of subjects such as negotiations with dealers, gossip from Paris, and health and family issues. Barnes’s acquisition of Modern art and his extensive collection of African art is documented by their letters, notes, lists of purchased artwork, receipts, and shipping statements.

Evidence of Barnes’s keen affinity for African American art and culture is found in his correspondence with Charles S. Johnson, Alain Locke, and James Weldon Johnson, as well as his many anonymous donations to African American organizations such as the NAACP, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the Armstrong Association, and the National Urban League’s journal, Opportunity. Correspondence with the Manual and Industrial Training School for Youth in Bordentown, New Jersey, highlights Barnes’s love of African American music and includes invitations to concerts performed by its Bordentown Choir in the Foundation’s Gallery. Letters with music director and composer Frederick J. Work include song lists, lyrics, references to music scholarships provided for Work and several of his students, guest lists, and menus and receipts for lunches and Sunday suppers at the Foundation.

In 1929, Barnes sold the A.C. Barnes Company to the Zonite Products Corporation. Files from both companies include letters and legal papers regarding the Zonite label and the trademark for Argyrol, Barnes’s resignation as president of the A.C. Barnes Company, and his waiver for the sale and transfer of his stock.

From 1930 to 1939, the correspondence tracks Barnes’s activities as president of the Barnes Foundation as well as his work as an author, lecturer, benefactor, and art collector. Barnes’s correspondence from this period contains letters from artists such as Jules Pascin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Giorgio de Chirico, and photographer Carl Van Vechten. Further documentation regarding the provenance of the art collection can be found in letters, invitations, exhibition catalogues, receipts, and shipping statements from art dealers such as Pierre Matisse, Alfred Stieglitz, Galerie Barbazanges, Paul Rosenberg, Tetzun-Lund, Caroll Carstairs, and Kraushaar Galleries.

Correspondence with Henri Matisse regarding the commission for The Dance mural (2001.25.50) installed in the Main Gallery includes their financial agreement, notes, and letters in French with some translations. Matisse also included sketches describing the placement for his paintings, Three Sisters (BF25, 363, 888), in the Gallery. Barnes and Matisse corresponded from 1930 until 1950.

Correspondence during the 1930s also documents Barnes’s travels to Europe to conduct research at museums and galleries for the Foundation’s books. Included are letters, notes, and drafts from members of the Foundation staff which support the manuscript collections found in the archives for the Foundation’s book publications, The French Primitives and Their Forms (1931), The Art of Henri-Matisse (1933), The Art of Renoir (1935), and The Art of Cézanne (1939).

Records reflecting Barnes’s inclusion of Native American art in the collection can be found in correspondence in the early 1930s with Western American art dealers which include receipts for jewelry, pottery, and textiles. By the end of the decade, correspondence with antique dealers such as Stony Batter Antique Exchange, Robert Burkhardt, Ellen Penrose, A. J. Pennypacker, and Clarence Ulrich contains letters, price lists, and receipts documenting Barnes’s additional acquisitions of American decorative arts and fine crafts such as Pennsylvania German chests, chairs, ironwork, brass, tin, copper, ceramics, pewter, textiles, and glass.

The correspondence from 1940 until Barnes’s death in 1951 documents the purchase of Barnes’s country home, Ker-Feal, in Chester County, the hiring – and firing – of English philosopher Bertrand Russell to teach at the Foundation, Barnes’s charitable activities during the Second World War, and continued efforts to create a link between the Barnes Foundation and an established university.

In 1942 alone, over 1,800 correspondents from across the country responded to magazine articles published about Barnes – one in House & Garden and a four part series in the Saturday Evening Post. Included in this year are the letters, notes, and drafts of essays written by Barnes and Violette de Mazia which were submitted to the editorial staff of House & Garden describing the educational purpose of the American decorative art collection displayed at Ker-Feal.

Correspondence from the 1940s includes plans and proposals documenting the expansion of Ker-Feal’s main house by the architectural firm Kneedler, Mirick and Zantzinger. Additional provenance regarding the collection at Ker-Feal can be found in letters discussing the authenticity of antique furniture, lists of purchases, and receipts from local dealers such as Hattie Klapp Brunner, Charles M. Heffner, Charles Vandeveer, Helena Penrose, and Joseph K. Kindig.

Evidence of Barnes’s support of the war effort during the Second World War can be found within correspondence and forms filed with the United States Office of Price Administration regarding gasoline rationing and the donation of crops grown at Ker-Feal. Correspondence with Fraser, Morris Co. and CARE includes pamphlets, price lists, brochures, and receipts for food and clothing parcels that Barnes purchased and sent to his friends in Europe. This correspondence also includes letters from former Foundation students-turned-soldiers as well as many others service men who wrote to Barnes from all over the world.

Barnes’s growing interest in Lincoln University, a historically black college located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, culminated in 1950 with the formation of an association between the two educational institutions. Correspondence with the university includes letters between Lincoln’s president, Horace Mann Bond, and Barnes, evidence of Barnes’s donation to help needy African students, an offer made to Barnes to join the Lincoln faculty, plans for a class at the Foundation for Lincoln students, the design of an art course to be taught in tandem by the two institutions, and Barnes’s acceptance of an honorary degree from the university.

The collection includes correspondence received by the Foundation over the months following Barnes’s death in 1951, letters mostly from students wishing to continue their studies in the fall of that year, and financial records regarding insurance and the Foundation’s pension fund. However, letters of condolence addressed to Mrs. Barnes in 1951 were removed. Correspondence of the Barnes Foundation from 1952 onwards can be found in the records of the Central File and other record groups.

Subject Terms

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Inventory

The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.