Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC

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Albert C. Barnes
Correspondence
1902-1951
ABC
Finding aid prepared by Barbara Anne Beaucar
This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit
June 14, 2017
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The Barnes Foundation Archives
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130
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Email: [email protected]
Barnes Foundation Archives
2012
Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
Table of Contents
Summary Information .................................................................................................................................3
Biographical Note..........................................................................................................................................4
Scope and Content.......................................................................................................................................15
Administrative Information .......................................................................................................................19
Related Materials ......................................................................................................................................20
Controlled Access Headings........................................................................................................................20
Collection Inventory....................................................................................................................................23
Series I. Correspondence.......................................................................................................................23
Series II. Third Party Correspondence..............................................................................................2083
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Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
Summary Information
Repository Barnes Foundation Archives
Creator Barnes, Albert C. (Coombs), 1872–1951
Title Albert C. Barnes Correspondence
Date 1902-1951
Extent 126.5 Linear feet
Language English
Abstract The Albert C. Barnes Correspondence (1872 – 1951) contains personal
and professional letters and records that document the activities of his
chemical companies, Barnes and Hille and the A.C. Barnes Company,
the acquisition of his world-renowned art collection, and the development
of the educational program which led to the establishment of the Barnes
Foundation, an institution over which he presided until his death in 1951.
The bulk of the correspondence (1924 – 1951) reflects Barnes’s work as
a businessman, art collector, author, and educator, and includes evidence
of his evolving educational theories, his finances, travels to Europe and
the American West, essays, lectures, and publications, and his opinions
regarding art and artists.
Preferred Citation
[Author(s)]. Letter to [recipient], [date]. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives,
Philadelphia, PA. Reprinted with permission.
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Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
Biographical Note
Albert C. Barnes (1872 – 1951) professed a lifelong interest in education, not only for himself, but for
those less fortunate around him, and for the public in general. Both a scientist and an entrepreneur, Barnes
developed and marketed Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound. The fortune earned from this medicine’s
global distribution allowed Barnes to realize his ideals and create the Barnes Foundation, an institution
established “to promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts.”
FAMILY
Barnes was born in Philadelphia on January 2, 1872, the third son of Lydia A. Schaffer (1846 – 1912)
and John J. Barnes (1844 – 1930). Barnes described his father as a man with “good intelligence and
tremendous energy” but lacking in balance.(1) During the Civil War, John Barnes enlisted in Company
D of the 82nd Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers. After the war, he found work as a letter carrier
and met Lydia A. Schaffer, a woman of Pennsylvania German descent and a devout Methodist. They
married on April 4, 1867. Barnes said that his mother was marvelous, “endowed with a keen, penetrating
intelligence…but best of all, she had poise and balance.”(2) Lydia Barnes has been credited for being
the motivating force in Barnes’s early life. She took him to Methodist camp meetings in New Jersey, an
experience that Barnes acknowledged as the source of his affinity for African American art and culture,
especially music.(3)
EDUCATION
In 1885, when Barnes was thirteen years old, he enrolled in Philadelphia’s Central High School. Central
High School was founded in 1838, the second public high school in the nation. Because of its high
academic standards, the Pennsylvania Assembly granted the school the “same and like power to confer
degrees, honorary and otherwise” as possessed by the University of Pennsylvania. Barnes first met artist
William J. Glackens (1870 – 1938) at Central High School, where he claimed that they became friends
through their common interest in sports – the two played baseball for the school team. Barnes also took
a serious interest in Glackens’s drawings, an interest that would eventually rekindle their friendship
twenty years later. During his third year at Central, the Barnes family moved away from the “Neck,” a
particularly rough section of South Philadelphia, to 1331 Tasker Street. Barnes delivered newspapers
for the Philadelphia Ledger where his father worked in the circulation department.(4) He completed
eight consecutive semesters at Central, served as vice-president of his senior class, and, in June of 1889,
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 1889, Barnes matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and graduated three years
later with a Doctor of Medical Arts (M.D.) degree at the age of twenty. Following his internships at the
Polyclinic Hospital in Philadelphia and Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh,(5) Barnes worked for two years as
a demonstrator of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. However, to finance his continued work in
chemistry, Barnes claimed that he held a variety of unusual jobs until he had finally saved enough money
to travel to Germany and attend the University of Berlin.(6)
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Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
Barnes traveled twice to study and work in Germany. From 1894 – 1895, he studied physiological
chemistry at the University of Berlin, and also worked as a sales agent for an American stove company.
Upon returning to the United States, H.K. Mulford and Company, a pharmaceuticals manufacturer,
employed him as an advertising and sales manager. Barnes said that he also tutored, translated, and
edited for the next few years while continuing with his own research work.(7) In 1900, H.K. Mulford
and Company sent him back to Germany to study pharmacology at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat in
Heidelberg. Barnes wrote and published his Doctor’s Arbeit on morphine derivatives in one year, and also
recruited German chemist Hermann Hille to work for the company.
LAURA L. BARNES
Barnes returned home to Philadelphia late in the summer of 1900 and, while vacationing with his cousin
in Milford, Pennsylvania, met his future wife, Laura Leggett (1875 – 1966). She was born in Brooklyn,
New York, the fifth child of six children born to Richard Lee and Clara Cox Leggett. Her father, who had
also served in the Civil War in New York City’s 7th Regiment, owned a successful wholesale grocery
business. Albert C. Barnes and Laura Leggett were married the following spring on June 4, 1901 at
St. James Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. They sailed to Europe on their honeymoon, first visiting the
university that Barnes attended in Heidelberg, and continuing on through the Black Forest to Switzerland
and Italy. The couple purchased their first home at 6374 Drexel Road in the Overbrook section of
Philadelphia.
BARNES AND HILLE
Although H.K. Mulford and Company employed both Barnes and Herman Hille, the two men worked
together privately to develop Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound which proved beneficial in the
treatment of eye inflammations, especially in infants. In 1902, they resigned their positions at H.K.
Mulford and Company and organized their own partnership, Barnes and Hille. Barnes handled the sales
and marketing, leaving Hille in charge of the laboratory located at 24 North 40th Street in Philadelphia.
Barnes employed both of his parents. His mother, Lydia A. Barnes, kept the books, and his father, John J.
Barnes, worked as the company watchman.
In 1902, Barnes and Hille also perfected the formula for Ovoferrin, an easily assimilated salt of iron.
Barnes found international distribution for Argyrol and Ovoferrin through Fassett & Johnson Company
with offices in London, England and Sydney, Australia. Due to Barnes’s business acumen, the company’s
earnings steadily increased over the next few years, and were further enhanced by an absence of
global competition. Argyrol was simply trade-marked, never patented, which would have revealed the
medicine’s formula. Only Hermann Hille knew the secret.
As early as December of 1905, Barnes expressed his dissatisfaction with Hille’s job performance but, by
1907, the partnership truly began to fail. In a letter to Hille, Barnes said, “I do not concede that you have
been an ‘equal partner,’ in reality, in this business, judged from your acts and other tangible evidence.”(8)
He instructed Hille to send all further communications to his lawyer, John G. Johnson (1841 – 1917),
and demanded of Hille that he divulge the “formulae, methods and processes of all the investigations,
inventions and discoveries made by [him] from April 30, 1903 up to the present date.”(9) Johnson sent
Barnes a copy of the partnership’s dissolution in September of 1908.
A.C. BARNES COMPANY
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Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
The demise of Barnes’s partnership with Hermann Hille launched his new business, A.C. Barnes
Company. Equipped with the knowledge of Argyrol’s formula, his company enjoyed continued success,
offering Barnes and his wife the opportunity to advance their standard of living. The couple had already
built their second home, “Lauraston,” named for Mrs. Barnes, on Union Avenue (now North Latch’s
Lane) in Merion, Pennsylvania, in 1905. Barnes hunted with the Pickering Hunt, the Chester Valley Hunt
Club, and the Rose Tree Fox Hunting Club. In 1910, he established the “Lauraston Cup,” a trophy for the
Rose Tree Races.
There is still speculation regarding the source of Barnes’s passion for art. He said that in the years
following his honeymoon, he returned to vacation in Europe every summer, went to “big galleries, to
various exhibitions of contemporary painting and to the dealers,” and bought some paintings simply
“because [he] liked them.”(10) Barnes’s subsequent interest in the study of art, “especially as it related
to education,” led to a resumption of his friendship with William Glackens in 1910. Barnes said, “I spent
many days in his studio and he came frequently to my house to visit me and discuss the paintings I had
accumulated.”(11) In the winter of 1912, Barnes sent Glackens to Paris to scout the galleries for paintings.
Accompanied by Alfred Henry Maurer (1868 – 1932), his friend and fellow member of the American
Ashcan School, Glackens bought approximately thirty-three works of art.
Barnes traveled to Paris himself in June of 1912. After returning home, he asked Maurer to continue to
“be on the lookout for paintings of the character which I desire, namely, good examples of works by
Maner [sic], Daumier, Ingres, Bazille, Goya, and such other of the masters who are not yet represented in
my collection.”(12) Barnes also suggested a business relationship to Maurer, offering him compensation
of two hundred and fifty francs per month to help market Argyrol in France. When Barnes visited
France again in December of 1912, he met collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein and purchased his first
two paintings by Henri Matisse. This marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship and correspondence
between Barnes and Leo Stein (1862 – 1947).
Meanwhile, the A.C. Barnes Company prospered. Barnes organized the business as a cooperative,
encouraging personal growth and a spirit of mutual respect among his employees. It inspired such
efficiency that the factory work could be completed in six hours, leaving the remaining two hours of
the day devoted to seminars for the workers. Comprised of nine individuals, the staff included white
women and African American men of various ages and levels of education. Barnes had hired Nelle
E. Mullen (1884 – 1967), while she was still in her teens, to be the company’s bookkeeper and, later,
brought her older sister Mary Mullen (1875 – 1957) into the company. When he stated that “one of the
women, who had a flair for psychology,” led the seminars, it was most likely Mary Mullen to whom he
referred. The workers read and discussed the pragmatic writings of William James and John Dewey.
George Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty (1896) provoked an interest in art and creative imagination to
which Barnes responded by hanging paintings from his collection in the factory building. These afternoon
seminars eventually resulted in the publication of Mary Mullen’s book, An Approach to Art (1923).
Though the war in Europe suspended travel to France to buy art, Barnes continued to collect his favorite
American artists, William J. Glackens, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast. He remained vigorously
interested in art and philosophy, writing two essays in 1915, “How to Judge a Painting” published in
Arts and Decoration and one on cubism, “Cubism: Requiescat in Pace.” While Barnes spent weekday
afternoons discussing books and paintings with his employees, he and Mrs. Barnes devoted their Sundays
to the performing arts at “Lauraston.” Violinist Vasilii Vasilévich Bezekirskii performed sonatas
by Franck, Mozart, Beethoven and Lalo accompanied by pianist Jean Verd. Barnes even purchased
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Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
a certified Francesco Ruggieri violin from the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company for Besekirskii to play
when in Merion. Usually, a small number of guests were invited to enjoy these musicales, some quite
distinguished such as Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and American
philosopher and educator John Dewey.
In the fall of 1917, Barnes enrolled in a post-graduate philosophy seminar taught by John Dewey (1859 –
1952) at Columbia University. The class consisted of ten students, each encouraged by Dewey to express
their opinions in the form of a round-table discussion. Barnes said that, “since the death of William
James, Dewey has been the unquestioned head of American philosophic thought, and he is simple,
plain, penetrating, inspiring and intensely interesting.”(13) Barnes and Dewey became close friends and
confidants, their friendship and correspondence eventually spanning more than three decades. In his
book, Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey asserted that while complex societies require the kind of
formal education that institutions provide, this type of learning separates students from a direct experience
with life. Inspired by Dewey, and with the encouragement of Dewey’s wife, Alice, Barnes decided to
expand his factory seminars into a more advanced experiment in education.
THE BARNES FOUNDATION
On October 13, 1922, Barnes purchased “Red-Slates,” the Joseph Lapsley Wilson (1844 – 1928) estate
situated on a fifteen acre arboretum near his home on Latch’s Lane. He received a charter from State
of Pennsylvania on December 4, 1922, to establish the Barnes Foundation, an educational institution
dedicated to promoting the appreciation of fine art and arboriculture. Barnes hired architect Paul Philippe
Cret (1876 – 1945) to design a residence and a gallery on the arboretum grounds. He immersed himself
in every step of the construction, from the selection of the building stone, Pouillenay and Coutarnoux,
shipped by steamer from France, to decisions regarding interior wall coverings. Barnes complained that
Cret’s exterior façade designs looked like “bull’s eyes” and replaced them with bas-relief sculptures
commissioned from artist Jacques Lipchitz (1891 – 1973). He engaged the Enfield Pottery and Tile
Works to create the ceramic tiles for the front portico of the gallery building, selecting both the tile colors
and the insets of African design elements such as the mask and crocodile motif from the Ivory Coast
Baule door (A238) in his collection.
Dr. Barnes acquired his vast collection of African art from Paris art dealer Paul Guillaume (1891 – 1934).
He most likely met Guillaume upon resuming his visits to France after the First World War, and the two
soon developed a friendly business relationship. Guillaume became Barnes’s principle agent in Paris,
handling purchases and exchanges with other dealers and eventually being named the Foundation’s
“Foreign Secretary.” In 1923, while the Foundation buildings were under construction, Barnes organized
an exhibition of his acquisitions of African art and Modern paintings at Guillaume’s gallery in Paris.
The Modern paintings, which were well received in France, unfortunately met with contempt from the
Philadelphia press when they were exhibited in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in April of
that year.
Both Barnes and Guillaume published essays about the influence of African sculpture on the Modern
movement in art, a view that attracted the interest of notable African Americans such as Howard
University professor Alain Locke (1886 – 1954) and social activist Charles S. Johnson (1893 – 1956).
In early 1924, Johnson invited Barnes to a party in New York for young African American writers after
which they discussed providing scholarships for some to study African art. Barnes devised an educational
program, the “New Plan for Negro Education,” an idea which Charles S. Johnson proposed to James
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Weldon Johnson of the N.A.A.C.P.(14) Barnes contributed to and became a lifetime member of the
Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, directed by Carter G. Woodson,(15) and donated
generously – and anonymously – to the National Urban League in support of their journal, Opportunity: A
Journal of Negro Life, edited by Charles S. Johnson.
While Barnes continued to manage the A.C. Barnes Company, to direct all aspects of the construction
of the Barnes Foundation buildings, and to collect remarkable works of art, he also began working on a
book that would become the primary text used in the Foundation’s educational program. Barnes hired
his former tutor, philosophy professor Laurence Buermeyer (1889 – 1970), to help with the structure of
the book, one he believed would be the first of its kind that “endeavored to attach the flesh and blood of
practical experience with paintings and with plain people.”(16) Barnes and Buermeyer shared common
intellectual interests – Barnes attended John Dewey’s seminars at Buermeyer’s suggestion – and their
relationship, while often troubled, remained constant over the years. Once Buermeyer completed the work
of organizing notes and editing drafts, he made yet another important suggestion to Barnes. He said, “I
like 'The Art in Painting' better than 'New Pictures from Old' as a title for the book… .”(17) The Art in
Painting (1925) was published just weeks before the Barnes Foundation’s official opening.
Days after the Foundation first received its charter in 1922, Barnes expressed the idea of working with
area colleges to develop a synthesis of the philosophies of Dewey and Santayana, an adaptation for
the average student. He asked Laurence Buermeyer to provide further clarification to students visiting
the Gallery because he thought him to be “the best qualified intellectually to carry out the plan.”(18)
However, it was philosophy professor Thomas Munro (1897 – 1974) who taught the first classes
beginning in 1924, one offered through the University of Pennsylvania and the other at Columbia
University. Painter Sara Carles, sister of Philadelphia artist Arthur B. Carles, joined Mary Mullen on the
teaching staff, and Barnes himself began speaking for two hours in front of the paintings on Fridays and
Sundays. Also in the spring of that year, Barnes published the first Journal of the Barnes Foundation,
featuring articles by Buermeyer, Mary Mullen, and Munro.
The Barnes Foundation officially opened on March 19, 1925, with a celebration that took place on “a
beautiful sunshiny afternoon… [with] some two hundred people present.”(19) John Dewey, whom
Barnes asked to serve as “honorary” director of education, gave the first address. He noted that the
Foundation’s focus was, in fact, a culmination of Barnes’s enduring interest in education, an extension
of the experimental classes held in the laboratories of A.C. Barnes Company, and he also emphasized
Barnes’s continued commitment to African Americans and “every-day people.”(20) When Barnes asked
Leopold Stokowski to speak on behalf of all artists, he explained why:
Stokowski said, “I will do it because I believe in your idea.”(22)
DR. BARNES AND MUSIC
When Barnes introduced music to his Sunday afternoon talks – reminiscent of the Sunday musicales
at “Lauraston” – it emphasized Buermeyer’s assertion that art was only one manifestation of the
Foundation’s interest in total human development. Barnes said, “It’s amazing how close are the
affiliations between music and paintings,”(23) and, with recordings, demonstrated the kinship between
Mozart and Prendergast, Beethoven and Cézanne, Gluck and Renoir, and Picasso and African American
spirituals. He must have welcomed the opportunity to introduce his students to spirituals, music he clearly
loved. Barnes said, “When I was about eight years old, I went to a negro camp meeting and have never
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Albert C. Barnes Correspondence 1902-1951 ABC
recovered from the thrill.”(24) In 1926, the Barnes Foundation began hosting an annual concert of African
American spirituals sung by the Bordentown Choir of New Jersey’s Manual Training and Industrial
School for Youth.
Charles S. Johnson first introduced Barnes to the Bordentown Choir and their beloved and respected
musical director, Frederick J. Work (1880 – 1942), while arranging a speaking engagement for Barnes
at the Women’s Faculty Club of Columbia University. The talk included lantern slides of African art
accompanied by the singing of spirituals. Later that evening, Barnes and his wife, Laura, and Paul
Guillaume joined Johnson for dinner and an evening of cabaret jazz music in Harlem. Barnes enjoyed
the “Harlem spree,”(25) but found the spirituals sung by Work’s choir far more captivating. He included
Laurence Buermeyer’s essay, “Negro Spirituals and American Art,” as one of five contracted articles for a
special issue of Opportunity devoted to art, along with his own essay, “Negro Art, Past and Present.”
THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
In the years following the opening of the Foundation, Barnes experienced both the sweetness of success
as well as the sting of disappointment. In April of 1926, the Republic of France awarded him the cross
of the Legion of Honor; however, that year also marked an end to a brief collaboration between the
Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. Mostly due to a declining student enrollment, Barnes
suspended both Thomas Munro’s course, “Fine Arts V: Modern Art” as well as Laurence Buermeyer’s
lectures on the “Aesthetic Experience.” The University’s inability to accept his advice on the structure of
the classes also drove Barnes’s decision to continue the Foundation’s educational program on his own. He
replaced Munro with two Foundation employees, Jeanette Portenar, teaching psychology and aesthetics,
and Violette de Mazia (1899 – 1988), conducting demonstrations in the Gallery. De Mazia, hired initially
as a French teacher, soon became an invaluable member of the Foundation staff, assisting Barnes with the
research and writing of four books, and eventually serving as the Foundation’s director of education and
member of the board of trustees.
As the wire services spread the news of the Foundation’s opening, an overwhelming amount of mail
arrived from across the nation. In 1925 alone, over one thousand correspondents wrote congratulatory
messages or expressed interest in coming to Merion to take classes. Barnes had once declared to his
friend John Dewey, “…I’m launched on a bigger ship than I thought I’d ever be called on to steer and
I’m going through with it somehow.”(26) Although frustrated by his association with the University of
Pennsylvania, Barnes reveled in the success of his “experiment in education” and also in the sales of his
book, The Art in Painting (1925).
REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT
As early as 1912, Barnes had begun developing the property along North Latch’s Lane. He contracted
Philadelphia architects Druckenmiller, Stackhouse & Williams to design an estate home on a portion of
the property belonging to the Marston family across the street from “Lauraston” on Latch’s Lane. By
1913, Barnes had also purchased property from the Latch family to build four more homes on Latch’s
Lane bordering the northeast corner of Old Lancaster Avenue. Upon taking possession of the Wilson
property in 1922, Barnes contracted John H. McClatchy, a local well-known builder of English stone
and Tudor style houses, to build two additional homes on Latch’s Lane as well as four houses along
Lapsley Lane, one of which became the home of Joseph Lapsley Wilson in his new role as director of
the Barnes Foundation Arboretum. By developing the area around the Foundation, Barnes had hoped
to create a “park occupied by high-class suburban residences.”(27) The approval, in 1927, of plans to
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construct one hundred and twenty-six twin style dwellings bordering his property led Barnes to contest
the new township zoning allowing such a venture. The dispute, which began with a threat to move his
art collection to New York City, culminated in the construction of a stone wall ten feet high and running
several hundred feet across the back of the Barnes Foundation property.
In 1929, Barnes decided to sell the A.C. Barnes Company to devote his full attention to the needs of
the Barnes Foundation. On July 19, 1929, Zonite Corporation of New York bought the A.C. Barnes
Company, maintaining its trademarked names for Argyrol and Ovoferrin. Barnes fortunately made the
decision to sell his company just months before the New York stock market crashed in October of that
year.
FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS
With A.C. Barnes Company sold, Barnes could dedicate more of his time to writing a series of books in
which he stressed the fundamental importance of a systematic study of art, even canceling his Sunday
lectures at the Foundation to write about the art of Henri Matisse. Barnes spent summers in Europe
conducting research in museums and galleries and taking notes for the books, The French Primitives
and Their Forms (1931), The Art of Henri-Matisse (1933), The Art of Renoir (1935), and The Art of
Cézanne (1939). Mrs. Barnes accompanied him and his writing team: Violette de Mazia, his co-author,
and staff members Nelle Mullen, Mary Mullen, and Laura Geiger. On location at hotel spas such as the
Hotel des Thermes, situated in the village of Brides-les-Bains in the foothills of the French Alps, and
during the return voyage home, the team compiled, transcribed, and edited their notes, underscoring the
collaborative nature of their work on the Foundation’s books.(28)
DECORATIVE ART AND FINE CRAFTS
Dr. Barnes usually traveled twice a year to Europe, visiting galleries and dealers to expand and refine his
collection of fine art, but a journey to the American West launched a new interest in collecting fine crafts.
Mrs. Barnes, at the suggestion of her doctor, traveled to New Mexico for a few months in the winter of
1929 – 1930. Barnes accompanied his wife and, while she rested, he bought Zuni, Navajo, and Apache
turquoise and silver jewelry, pawn jewelry, rugs, santos, Zia, Old Domingo, Santa Anna, Acoma, and
San Ildefonso pottery, and Navajo blankets from dealers with such colorful names as La Fonda Indian
Shop, Old Santa Fe Trading Post, and Spanish and Indian Trading Company. Barnes found the “eternal
sunshine” of the Southwest delightful but seemed to be even more intrigued by the ceremonial dances
performed by the indigenous people there. In a letter to artist Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954), he described it
as a unique experience and added, “I was sorry you were not with me to see the marvelous spectacle.”(29)
That same year, Matisse also traveled to the American West and, upon his return, asked to visit the
Barnes Foundation.(30) Barnes, who first purchased Matisse’s work from Gertrude Stein in 1912,
believed Matisse to be the most well informed of all the artists he ever knew and, in Matisse’s work,
always found “something that is his own, is not a repetition, and is in line with the traditions.”(31) Their
visit culminated in a commission for Matisse to paint a mural to decorate the lunettes above the French
windows in the Barnes Foundation Gallery. Matisse, who had never had the opportunity to work on
such a large scale before, returned to Nice, France, rented a garage as studio space to accommodate
a substantial painting, installed a skylight to mimic the lighting at the Foundation, and created The
Dance (2001.25.50). The Barnes Foundation commission revitalized Matisse, inspiring his future artistic
production both in terms of scale and materials.
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