by Edward J. Sozanski, The Inquirer
October 22, 2000
The artists whose paintings hang in the
administrative offices of the Barnes Foundation include some prominent
figures in 19th- and 20th-century art.
One of them, Philadelphian William Glackens, was a classmate of Albert C.
Barnes at Central High School. He helped Barnes start what became one of
the most famous art collections in America.
Glackens studied at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts and subsequently became associated with the
turn-of-the-century American realists sometimes called the Ashcan painters
because they drew subject matter from urban life.
Glackens and another artist in the Barnes collection, Maurice Prendergast, also were
members of the group known as The Eight, after a famous 1908 exhibition in
which eight artists participated.
Prendergast painted in a bright and colorful post-impressionist style.
His subjects, typically well-dressed people strolling in a park, were
more genteel than those of the Ashcan group.
Gustave Courbet was a giant of 19th-century French painting. His rigorous
realism brought French painting back to earth after the more fanciful
romantic period, and served as a foundation for impressionism.
Chaim Soutine and Giorgio de Chirico were prominent painters of the modern period.
Soutine, a Russian Jew who worked in Paris, is remembered for his raw,
passionate expressionism. Barnes was his first important patron.
The Italian Chirico is often identified as a surrealist, but his paintings,
typified by pictures of mannequins and haunting scenes of deserted urban
plazas, are more metaphysical than fantastic in mood.
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