George Gray Barnard
George Gray Barnard (born May 24, 1863 in Bellefonte , Pennsylvania , † April 24, 1938 in New York ) was an American sculptor and art collector.
life and work
Barnard grew up in Kankakee , Illinois . He began his training at the Art Institute of Chicago and then went to Paris, where he worked from 1883 to 1887 in Pierre-Jules Cavelier's studio and attended the École des Beaux-Arts . He stayed in Paris for twelve years and successfully exhibited his works for the first time in the Paris Salon of 1894 before returning to the USA in 1896.
The influence of Auguste Rodin can be clearly felt in his early work . Evidence of this: The Boy (1885), Cain (1886, later destroyed), Brotherly Love or Two Friends (1887), the allegory Two Natures (1894, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art ), The Hewer (1912, in Cairo (Illinois) ) ), Great God Pan on the Columbia University campus in New York City, Rose Maiden and Maidenhood .
In 1912 he made some figures for the new parliament building (State Capitol) in Harrisburg in the US state of Pennsylvania . A colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln sparked heated controversy in 1917, as Barnard portrayed the former US president with very rough features and slumped shoulders. The first cast of this statue was found in Cincinnati in 1917 . Further casts followed in 1919 in Manchester, England, and in Louisville , Kentucky, in 1922 .
The sculpture Great God Pan , one of Barnard's first works after his return to America, was originally intended for the Dakota Building in New York's Central Park . Alfred Corning Clark , the son of the original builder of the building, had given Barnard financial support early in his career. When Clark died in 1896, his family donated Barnard's sculpture Two Natures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his honor . The large bronze figure of Pan was given to Columbia University by Clark's son Edward Severin Clark in 1907.
During his stay in France, Barnard brought together a large collection of medieval art and architectural fragments. He opened a private museum on Fort Washington Avenue, which he initially called the Gothic Collection , before renaming it The Cloisters . This collection came into the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1925 after John D. Rockefeller II donated $ 600,000 for it. Today these art treasures can be seen in a branch of the museum called The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park near the northern tip of Manhattan .
From 1902 Barnard was an associate member ( ANA ) of the National Academy of Design and since 1908 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .
Individual evidence
- ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "B" / Barnard, George Gray ANA 1902 ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed June 17, 2015)
- ^ Members: George Gray Barnard. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 14, 2019 .
gallery
Abraham Lincoln statue in Cincinnati
State Capitol in Harrisburg (detail)
literature
- Elizabeth Bradford Smith: George Gray Barnard: artist / collector / dealer / curator , in: Medieval art in America: patterns of collecting, 1800-1940, University Park, Pa. 1996, ISBN 0-911209-45-X , pp. 133-142.
- Frederic C. Moffat: Errant bronzes: George Gray Barnard's statues of Abraham Lincoln . Newark and London 1998, ISBN 0-87413-628-8
- Michael Conforti, James A. Ganz, Neil Harris, Sarah Lees, Gilbert T. Vincent: The Clark Brothers Collect, Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings . New Haven and London 2006, ISBN 0-931102-65-0
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Barnard, George Gray |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American sculptor and collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 24, 1863 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bellefonte , Pennsylvania , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 24, 1938 |
| Place of death | New York City , New York , United States |