Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century Manuscripts,
circa 1927–1931

A Guide

The Barnes Foundation Archives

300 North Latch's Lane
Merion, PA, 19066
Fax: 610-664-4026
Email: archives@barnesfoundation.org

Funding provided by the
National Endowment for the Humanities
and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

[c] 2006 The Barnes Foundation

Collection Summary
Repository:	The Barnes Foundation
Creator:	Albert C. (Coombs) Barnes, 1872–1951 Violette de Mazia, 1899-1988
Title:	Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century Manuscripts
Dates:	circa 1927–1931
Extent:	23 linear feet
Abstract:	This collection consists of background materials, travel notes, and drafts in manuscript, typescript, carbon copy, stat, and mimeograph copy form, as well as galley proofs, page proofs, and a final printed text block for The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century by Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia.
Code:	FP
Language:	The majority of this collection is in English. Some material is in shorthand, and a small quantity is in French.

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

[Description of item], [date]. Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century Manuscripts. The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, Pennsylvania. Reprinted with permission.

Acquisition Information

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

Processed By

Adrienne Pruitt. Finding aid written by Adrienne Pruitt, September 2006.

Access Restrictions

The Barnes Foundation Archives is currently closed for research while staff complete grant-funded projects to process the collection. Please contact the Archives for information on access and research.

Use Restrictions

The Barnes Foundation’s writings 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. Some items in this collection may be illegible due to the degradation of their physical elements, and some may be too fragile for use without the archivist’s supervision. Please consult the archivist for more information.

Related Material

Historical Note

Dr. Albert C. Barnes established the Barnes Foundation in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts.” In addition to offering classes on art appreciation, the Foundation published a journal and a series of books dealing with aesthetics, art criticism, and pedagogic theory. Dr. Barnes encouraged his staff to write on topics of personal interest that would further the Foundation’s educational mission. He also enlisted their efforts in the collation, editing, and rewriting of his own manuscripts. The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century was the first book Barnes coauthored with Violette de Mazia, a teacher of art and aesthetics at the Barnes Foundation. In 1927, de Mazia accompanied Dr. Barnes and Foundation staff on a trip to Europe to research the second edition of The Art in Painting (1928). This trip sparked Barnes and de Mazia’s interest in the French primitives, and, convinced that all of the currently available reference works on the subject were “quite useless,” they resolved to write their own.

In their book, Barnes and de Mazia set out to apply “an authentically objective standard or criterion of judgment” to the classification of early French painting. This would eventually involve over three years of exhaustive research, several additional trips to Europe, and a rotating cast of half a dozen support staff. Laura V. Geiger (called “Jane”) and sisters Nelle E. and Mary Mullen took notes, transcribed dictation, and indexed, organized, and filed research materials and drafts. Herbert Kent Jennings Jr., a teacher at the Barnes Foundation from 1928 to 1933, compiled catalogue data, while Laurence Buermeyer (called “Harold” due to his resemblance to silent-film star Harold Lloyd) assisted with editing and rewrote drafts where necessary to improve the prose. Initial impressions of various artworks were corroborated over the years by different Barnes Foundation staff to help ensure objectivity and to verify Barnes and de Mazia’s hypotheses and evolving system of classification. Barnes described the demanding schedule of a typical research trip: “Each day is full beginning at 8 o’clock in the morning, working until the gallery is open at 10, looking at pictures until one, getting a quick lunch & back in our special work room at the hotel by two o’clock, where we work until about six. The room we have to work in at the hotel looks like an office with its scattered books and papers and sounds like a jazz band with the operation of numerous typewriters.”

The book’s unusually long gestation period allowed ample time for revision and debate over the characteristics that properly belonged to a true French primitive painting. The coauthors disagreed on occasion, and their often humorous exchanges, which are captured in these papers, attest to de Mazia’s growth as a scholar and to Barnes’s respect for her aesthetic judgment, to which he often deferred, albeit grudgingly. Across one draft he scrawled, exasperated, “While my name appears as co-author, I disown it: I had a hell of a time with the other author—and she always won.” Barnes and de Mazia’s careful arguments and exacting standards would eventually result in an exhaustive, encyclopedic work, but only after a complete rewrite undertaken at the last minute.

In May 1930, Barnes and de Mazia set off on a final research trip, and found that in their third year of writing and rewriting, a critical point of disorder had been reached that would prohibit the incorporation of new information without a total overhaul of the manuscript. Barnes wrote to Laurence Buermeyer lamenting the book’s “utter chaotic condition” in July 1930, and Barnes, de Mazia, and Buermeyer spent the fall furiously perfecting new drafts in an attempt to meet a projected January 1931 publication date. Inevitably the printing had to be postponed, and The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century was at last published on April 1, 1931. It received glowing reviews for its “revolutionary” approach and “comprehensive” coverage. Barnes was pleased with the final product and boasted to one correspondent that “[t]he book itself has probably done more to establish the status of the Foundation as a laboratory of scientific research than any thing we have ever published.” The French Primitives further cemented a successful intellectual partnership, and Barnes and de Mazia would go on to author three more books and several articles together.

Scope and Content

This collection consists of background materials, drafts, proofs, and a final printed text block for The French Primitives and Their Forms from Their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century by Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia. Background materials comprise a large amount of travel notes compiled over three years, including a scrapbook of travel notes. These notes provide evidence of Barnes’s rigorously scientific approach to art history, as well as his interactions with co-author Violette de Mazia and with other Foundation employees who helped to organize and refine the authors’ research. The background materials also contain descriptions of several exhibitions, most notably the 1927 French primitives show at the F. Kleinberger Galleries in New York.

Drafts of The French Primitives are in manuscript, typescript, carbon copy, mimeograph copy, stat, galley, and page proof form. The majority of the drafts are late drafts, which date from August 1930 to January 1931 and reflect the extensive revisions undertaken after the authors’ 1930 trip to Europe. Drafts were revised by Dr. Barnes and Violette de Mazia and by their associates Laurence Buermeyer, Laura V. Geiger, and Mary Mullen. In order to accurately track the many changes to the text, secretary Laura V. Geiger recopied each reader’s revisions in different-colored pencils, and provided a color-coded, dated legend to the corrections. This kind of legend can be found on many of the drafts. In addition, many drafts bear letter and number annotations, which refer to original travel notes that had been indexed by subject in a complicated cross-reference system.

Perhaps because the preparation of the book took place over an extended period of time and involved intensive revision by a large number of people, this collection’s physical condition is varied. Drafts that had been retyped, or had otherwise served their purpose, were often torn halfway to indicate their “completed” status. Revisions and notes in pencil were sometimes erased, possibly because they were found to be inaccurate or were otherwise rejected.

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Inventory

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