The new exhibit at the Barnes Foundation spans Glackens’s career from the 1890s through the 1930s, with more than 90 major paintings and works on paper from some of America's finest private and public collections. At least one important work, Vaudeville Team (c. 1908–1909), London Family Collection, has not been publicly exhibited before and several others have rarely, if ever, been shown. This long-overdue survey introduces Glackens to a new generation of viewers and invites further scholarship on a pivotal figure in the history of American art.
Glackens was a boyhood friend of Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951), the Philadelphia-born pharmaceutical entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, art collector, and creator of the Barnes Foundation. They knew each other from Philadelphia’s prestigious Central High School, and when they renewed their friendship in 1911, Glackens guided Barnes toward an appreciation of modern French painting. In early 1912, Barnes wrote to Glackens: “Dear Butts, I want to buy some good modern paintings. Can I see you on Tuesday next in New York to talk about it?” The following month, with $20,000 from Barnes in his pocket, the artist traveled to Paris on a buying trip and returned with 33 works including ones by Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Maurice Denis, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Many of these purchases became the cornerstone of Barnes’s fabled collection. The two men remained close, and Barnes became his loyal and most important patron. Barnes found Glackens indispensable, stating in 1915, “The most valuable single educational factor to me has been my frequent association with a life-long friend who combines greatness as an artist with a big man’s mind.”
Born in Philadelphia, Glackens (1870–1938) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There, and as an artist for the Philadelphia Press, he became friends with Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan, the core of the group that later formed “The Eight” in reaction to the National Academy of Design’s hidebound exhibition policies. The group exhibited together only once, in 1908, creating the opening wedge in the struggle to democratize the process by which artists could show and sell their work.
The exhibition at the Barnes Foundation reunites under one roof for the first time since 1908 six of the seven works that Glackens exhibited in The Eight’s show. One of the works, Race Track (1908–1909), is on view in the Barnes’s collection gallery (Room 12); the location of the seventh work is unknown. Furthermore, three works from the 1908 exhibition—At Mouquin’s (1905) from the Art Institute of Chicago, The Shoppers (1907-08) from the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, and In the Buen Retiro (1906), from the Ted Slavin Collection—are among a group of seven significant works not shown at the other venues of William Glackens. The remaining works are: Chateau Thierry and its study (1906), from the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA; Shop Girls (1900), from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Bathers at Bellport (1912), from the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
In conjunction with this exhibition, an archival presentation, William James Glackens: An Artist and Friend, showcases the strong friendship between Dr. Albert C. Barnes and William Glackens. It features eight key letters pulled from the Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, which holds communication between the two men from 1913 to 1935. It also includes three photographs donated to the Barnes Foundation from the Glackens family, including a charming image of Glackens with his daughter Lenna.
The exhibit opens November 8 and runs through February 2, 2015. The Barnes Foundation is located at 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. The museum is open 10-6 daily and closed Tuesdays.
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