On August 27, Alex Cooper Auctioneers will host a Gallery Auction of paintings, furniture, decorative arts and fine rugs. The selection of artworks features well-known names like Salvador Dalí and Zao Wou Ki, but the leading paintings are from a lesser-known Philadelphia artist: John Pierce Barnes (1893-1954).
Barnes first studied at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Design and then the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. He won a fellowship and traveled to Europe in 1923, where he was exposed to the work of the French Impressionists and plein air art. Upon his return, he accepted a job at the Victor Talking Machine Company (later acquired by the Radio Corporation of America) in 1926 and remained there until he died. He was a product designer for record cabinets, but his true passion lay in painting.
Since art was not his full-time job, Barnes' oeuvre is comparatively small, with about 70 oils, 100 watercolors and 30 pastels. While he never promoted his work in his lifetime, the more recent discovery of his paintings led to a retrospective at the Woodmere Museum in Philadelphia in 2009 and the museum subsequently acquired one of his works.
Now, a portrait and a landscape of his will go up for auction at Alex Cooper.
The first, an oil portrait, depicts a man with a stern expression wearing a blue jacket. The colorful, jewel-toned background is characteristic of Impressionism and Pointillism with its individual strokes and kaleidoscopic color. It comes from the collection of The Twistback Art Conservancy in Oxford, PA.
Also from the Conservancy's collection comes Landscape with Barn with a "The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts" label. The bucolic landscape also echoes Impressionist work like that of Cézanne and captures the American countryside with a focus on light, shadow and perspective.