DR. BARNES OF MERION

by Henry Hart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 1962

Albert Coombs Barnes was an American ""first"", a rara ants combo: he had a head for business, an eye for art and came out a winner with both. In these intimate, highly intriguing pages, editor Henry Hart offers a sort of Roswellian rundown of the great man and his havings been a surrogate son of Barnes since the twenties. Everything glitters, from Barnes as an evolving entrepreneur, shelving his MD shingle, delving into pharmacology and launching that pre-antibiotic wonder, Argyrol, to the selling of his multi-million dollar corporation just prior to the Wall Street crash and establishing the even more challenging and/or controversial Barnes' Foundation and Gallery, equipped out of his "" experience"" studying and buying the best of modern art. Barnes had a trio of teachers William James taught him to think, Santayana to feel and John Dewey to act; he also had well-publicized hassles via the Philadelphia Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, Main Line society. Bertrand Russell and assorted academicians, antiquarians, ivory tower and headline harping reporters. Anyway, the whole of Barnes' bustle, bark and brinkmanship, (along with excerpts from his searching monographs on Cezanne, Renoir and Matisse), come brimmingly to life in a banquet biography of a dazzling democratic autocrat.

Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1962

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION