The Salmagundi Club To Host "The Art of John Pierce Barnes"

Written by Catherine Sakai Wednesday, 24 August 2011 23:02

New York City.- The Salmagundi Club is proud to present "The Art of John Pierce Barnes" on view from September 15th through September 28th. The exhibition marks the first time that the Pennsylvania impressionist’s art will have be shown publicly in New York. The exhibit features pastels and oils. The 24 pastels included in this exhibition were exhibited in 2008 at the Flora Giffuni Gallery of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. A student of acclaimed Pennsylvania impressionist Daniel Garber, Barnes is best known for his oil paintings of landscapes and portraits rendered in the impressionist and pointillist styles with vigorous broken brush strokes, often in a bold bright palette. He painted in eastern Pennsylvania, on the Maine coastline, and in Europe.

“Although Barnes was an extremely talented impressionist master of paint and pastel, his art remained relatively unknown to the general public,” says Kathryn Scimone Stanko, curator of the Barnes collection. “The Salmagundi Club has been a center for American art since 1871, so it is a significant location in which to present this historic American collection to the New York public for the first time.” Barnes grew up in Philadelphia, later attending classes at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Design (now the University of the Arts) and finally at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he won a Toppan prize and the coveted Cresson Travel Scholarship in 1923 and again in 1924. “While Garber’s tutelage is strongly seen in Barnes’ canvases,” explains Stanko, “Barnes was also influenced by his other instructors as well, Arthur B. Carles and H.H. Breckenridge, who exhibited at the groundbreaking New York Armory Show of 1913, known as The International Exhibition of Modern Art. “Some of Barnes’ work is actually quite modern, even fauvist,” Stanko continues. “His plein air pastels and watercolors were exhibited in the early 1920s at the annual Philadelphia Watercolor and Miniatures Exhibitions.”


Barnes’ painting, Sunset, is part of the permanent collection of the Woodmere Museum in Philadelphia. His work is also found in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, as well as in private collections throughout the United States. American Art Review featured an article about Barnes in 2010. Barnes combined his artistic talent with graphic and industrial design at RCA in Camden, New Jersey, where he worked in the Victor Design Division. He is credited with designing an early RCA logo, as well as the General Electric logo still used today.

Founded in 1871, the Salmagundi Club is one of the oldest art organizations in the United States. Housed in an historic brownstone mansion in Greenwich Village, New York City, the Club offers programs including art classes, exhibitions, painting demonstrations, and art auctions throughout the year for members and the general public. The Salmagundi facilities include three galleries, a library, an elegant period parlor, and a restaurant and bar with vintage pool tables. All facilities are available for special events and private rentals. The Club owns a collection of over 1,500 works of art spanning its 140 year history and has a membership of nearly 850 artists and patrons. Its members have included important American artists such as Thomas Moran, William Merritt Chase, Louis Comfort Tiffany, N.C. Wyeth and Childe Hassam. Today the Club builds on this lineage by providing a center for the resurgence of representational art in America. Visit the club's website at ... www.salmagundi.org

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