George Grey Barnard
Encyclopedia
George Grey Barnard was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, "an excellent American sculptor", the French art dealer René Gimpel
René Gimpel
René Gimpel was a prominent French art dealer, friend and patron of living artists and collector. He was the son of a picture dealer and the brother-in-law of Sir Joseph Duveen...
reported in his diary (1923), "very much engrossed in carving himself a fortune out of the trade in works of art." His lasting monument, rather than any sculpture of his own, is the architectural nucleus of The Cloisters
The Cloisters
The Cloisters is a museum located in Fort Tryon Park, New York City. The building, which is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was reconstructed in the 1930s from the architectural elements of several European medieval abbeys...
, New York City.
Barnard was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
Bellefonte is a borough in Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It lies about twelve miles northeast of State College and is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, but grew up in Kankakee, Illinois
Kankakee, Illinois
Kankakee is a city in Kankakee County, Illinois, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 25,561, and 26,840 as of a 2009 estimate. It is the county seat of Kankakee County...
, the son of Joseph Barnard and Martha Grubb, and the grandson of his namesake George Grey Grubb. He first studied at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, and in 1883–1887 worked in the atelier of Pierre-Jules Cavelier
Pierre-Jules Cavelier
Pierre-Jules Cavelier was a French academic sculptor.Son of a silversmith and furniture maker, student of the sculptors David d'Angers and the painter Paul Delaroche, Cavelier won the Prix de Rome in 1842 with a plaster statue of Diomedes Entering the Palladium...
at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
while he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
. He lived in Paris for twelve years, and with his first exhibit at the Salon of 1894 he scored a great success, returning to America in 1896.
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
influence is evident in his early work. His principal works include, “The Boy” (1885); “Cain” (1886), later destroyed; “Brotherly Love,” sometimes called “Two Friends” (1887); the allegorical “Two Natures” (1894, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York); “The Hewer” (1902, at Cairo, Illinois); “Great God Pan” Dodge Hall quadrangle, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
campus, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; the “Rose Maiden”; the simple and graceful “Maidenhood”. In 1912 he completed several figures for the new state capitol
Pennsylvania State Capitol
The Pennsylvania State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and is in downtown Harrisburg. It was designed in 1902 in a Beaux-Arts style with Renaissance themes throughout...
at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...
. A larger than life-sized statue of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, in 1917, was the subject of heated controversy because of its rough-hewn features and slouching stance. The first casting is in Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
(1917), the second in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, England (1919), and the third in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
(1922).
The Great God Pan, one of the first works Barnard completed after his return to America, according to at least one account, was originally intended for the Dakota Apartments on Central Park West. Alfred Corning Clark
Alfred Corning Clark
-Biography:He was born on November 14, 1844 to Edward Clark, a founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He married and had as his children: Edward Severin Clark, Robert Sterling Clark, Frederick Ambrose Clark and Stephen Carlton Clark, Sr....
, builder of the Dakota, had financed Barnard's early career; when Clark died in 1896, the Clark family presented Barnard's Two Natures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his memory, and the giant bronze Pan was presented to Columbia University, by Clark's son, Edward Severin Clark, 1907.
Washington Heights, Manhattan
Washington Heights is a New York City neighborhood in the northern reaches of the borough of Manhattan. It is named for Fort Washington, a fortification constructed at the highest point on Manhattan island by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War, to defend the area from the...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The collection was purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1925 and forms part of the nucleus of The Cloisters
The Cloisters
The Cloisters is a museum located in Fort Tryon Park, New York City. The building, which is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was reconstructed in the 1930s from the architectural elements of several European medieval abbeys...
collection, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
.
Barnard died following a heart attack on April 24, 1938 at the Harkness Pavilion, Columbia University Medical Center
Columbia University Medical Center
Columbia University Medical Center is an academic medical center that includes Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, College of Dental Medicine, School of Nursing and Mailman School of Public Health...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He was working on a statue of Abel, betrayed by his brother Cain, when he fell ill. He is interred at Harrisburg Cemetery
Harrisburg Cemetery
Harrisburg Cemetery, formerly known as Mount Kalmia Cemetery, is a prominent cemetery and national historic district in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, located at 13th and Liberty streets in the Allison Hill/East Harrisburg neighborhoods of the city. It was officially founded in 1845, although...
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...
.
Further reading
- Sara Dodge Kimbrough, Drawn from Life: The Story of Four American Artists Whose Friendship & Work Began in Paris During the 1880s, Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 1976.
- Nicholas Fox Weber, The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-Year Feud, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
External links
- Kankakee County Historical Society biography.
- Chronology of George Grey's life and contributions to the art world.
- Centre County Historical Society
Archives of American Art
Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C...