 Hello, and welcome to this virtual tour of the Barnes Foundation. My name is Penny Hansen and I'm a docent at the Barnes. I am coming to you today, not from the galleries, but from my living room to yours during this time of staying safe at home. In this highlights collection, in this highlights tour of the collection, for those of you who have not yet visited the Barnes, and perhaps to refresh the memories of those of you who have, I will take you into some of the rooms, talk about the arrangements of the wall ensembles, and look at some of the many masterpieces we have here. Dr. Albert Barnes, born in Philadelphia in 1872, into a family of very modest means, was a self-made man who used his fortune to amass one of the most outstanding collections of 19th and early 20th century art, along with sub-Saharan African sculpture, folk art, metalworks, furniture, and much, much more. Dr. Barnes began collecting paintings in early 1912 when he sent his good friend, the artist William Glackens, to Paris with $20,000 to, as he said, buy me some good examples of this modern art I have been reading about. Glackens returned three weeks later with 33 paintings, some of which were by Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse, Pizarro, Degas, and so on, many of which are still on the walls today. These rather strange paintings piqued Dr. Barnes' curiosity, so he travelled to Paris himself later that year and met with artists including Picasso, many art dealers, and befriended the collectors, Leo and Gertrude Stein, who were closely tied to the Parisian avant-garde artistic community. In the process, Barnes bought more paintings, and from that time on, no one else bought paintings on his behalf. He continued to buy trade cell paintings up until his death in 1951 at the age of 79. As we walk into the main gallery, the largest of the 23 rooms here, those of you who have yet to visit the collection will see immediately what makes the Barnes so very different from any other museum you have visited before, the way the paintings are hung. Dr. Barnes displayed his collection by stacking the paintings salon style, arranging them very symmetrically on burlap-covered walls, alongside disparate objects, mixing up artists, styles, traditions, cultures, and time periods. Note also the absence of any didactic text. Dr. Barnes believed that anyone could learn to appreciate art by looking for themselves, not learning by road, by analysing works in terms of elements of design, line, light, colour, and space, to see as the artist sees, that all artists connected across traditions, time, and cultures, that art is all around us in our daily lives. Think of his walls, his ensembles, as blackboards, each one perhaps a work of installation art. In this room are many paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir. The Barnes has 181 Renoirs, the largest collection of any museum, as well as an impressive collection of 69 works by Paul Cézanne. In fact, this entire wall, the north wall, is hung with nothing but Renoir and Cézanne. These two artists, two of the major artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, with two very different styles, their influence on later generations reverberates throughout this collection. Immediately in front of us as we walk in, on the south wall are two large paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as well as the huge mural, The Dance, which spans the entire length of the south wall, painted specifically for this room in 1931-33 by the artist Henri Matisse and commissioned by Dr. Barnes for $30,000, when Matisse visited the foundation in 1930. These giant female nudes tumble across the entire wall, dancing across the treetops we see outside the windows, seemingly part of the architecture, and an integral part of the wall, as was intended by Matisse, even though they are indeed three huge unframed canvases. Notice how the hinges here, which are actually German and American barn door hinges, draw our eye upwards to the pendentives between the arches containing these tumbling curved dancers. Upon the 1933 installation of this piece, under Matisse's watchful eye, Barnes exclaimed he now had his own rose window, like in a cathedral. To the left of the window is Matisse's seated rifian, painted in 1912 after a visit to Morocco. Remarkable for its size and presence, this rift tribesman is almost bursting out of the frame. This painting is based in the dusty hazy light, typical of Matisse's Moroccan paintings. It is composed of pinks, yellows, soft blues and greens. This painting is flat but spatial at the same time. Notice how this blue rectangle takes our eye back into space and seemingly pushes the figure forward at the same time. Matisse's contribution to modern art was his development of a monumental decorative art, innovative in both its treatment of the human figure and in the constructive and expressive role he accorded to color. Barnes bought this painting in 1925 and he moved it around a lot before hanging it here. There are 59 Matisse's in the collection. To the right of the window, we see Pablo Picasso's composition, The Peasants. Barnes purchased this painting in 1913 from the dealer Volard for just $100. This scene and use of color inspired by his visit that summer to the village of Gosol in the Spanish Pyrenees shows a flower seller and a young girl on the way to market. It is painted in the soft terracottas, beiges, pinks and reds of his rose period of 1905-06 when he was still a young struggling artist. These mask-like faces show his growing interest in African tribal sculpture he had recently seen in Paris. These elongated figures, we see here the influence of the old master, El Greco. Notice the geometric shapes, particularly in the dress and in the shirt. These foreshadow cubism, which he would develop along with Georges Braque just a few years later. Matisse and Picasso were both friends and great rivals, propelling each other forward in their artistic explorations. Matisse was all about color and decoration, painting what he saw in front of him, Picasso all about line and form, painting from his imagination. Each one had a huge impact on modern art. Let us remain in the main gallery just a little longer and we're turning now to the East Wall. This wall ensemble offers perhaps one of the most striking contrasts in the collection. We have two monumental but very different canvases dominating the wall, which is also hung with two Venetian old masters from the 16th century. The large canvas at the top is the large bathers by Paul Cézanne, which Barnes acquired in 1933. All his life, Cézanne's ambition was to tackle the Renaissance theme of nudes in the landscape. He made around 200 works on this theme, but three stand out for their size and ambition and are often regarded as the culminating works of his career. Let's just zoom in on this. The large bathers here is one of them. Cézanne worked on this canvas for the last decade of his life. He died in 1906 and this canvas shows the evidence of a long labored working process. The subject is perfectly conventional, but there is nothing conventional in the way this scene is painted. Here, nine women gather by a stream to bays, but these are not the voluptuous nymphs and beautiful pagan goddesses of Western painting tradition. Nature seems menacing with the heavy weighted clouds and thundering blue sky. The figures themselves are arranged in classical postures. Cézanne, by the way, did not paint from the live nude model, but they are at once beautiful, unsightly, ambiguous, strange. The bathers seem to blend with the luminous landscape. They echo the strength of the trees as if merging into them. Cézanne's brushwork creates a sense of volume, which emphasizes the bathers' extraordinary monumentality, as it is as if almost they were carved out of mountain rock themselves. Notice how the large hinges on either side of the large bathers seem to echo the shape of the women on the edges of the painting. In contrast, beneath it hangs Renoir's The Family. Painted in 1896, shown a group of cheerful, rosy-cheeked figures. His wife, two sons and a maid and a neighborhood girl, arranged with very stable and reassuring geometry. Those Renoir and Cézanne drew heavily on past traditions, and this all highlights those influences. We just go back again to the wall. Flanking the Renoir on the left and on the right is a painting here by Tintoretto and a painting here by Valonese, two 16th-century Venetian old masters. Both these figures in these paintings display figures closed in deep red tones that are echoed again within the Renoir. The Chardon still life to the right references, if we can go across, references the Cézanne still life over here to the left. Cézanne admired the work of Chardon. And the landscape here on the right by the door is by Renoir. And it has soft, flickering veil of light in contrast with the solid materiality of the Cézanne. Above the doors, we can see, remove a little bit here, above each of the doors are works by Barnes's friend William Glackens, who was a great admirer of Renoir. Barnes is paying his friend a huge compliment here by hanging his work alongside some of the great old masters, some of the great masters. Now let's go to room eight. Here we are in room eight. To look at a very tightly composed ensemble on the south wall. Let me just zoom in a little bit. There we are. This is the ensemble I use in many of my tours to demonstrate Dr. Barnes's ideas of line, light, colour and space. Here we have a V shape of paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir interlocked with an upside down V of paintings by Paul Cézanne. In fact, the wall is nothing but Renoir and Cézanne. Along with furniture, objects. So if we think about line, for example, if we look at the front of the 18th century chest, it is carved with these very soft undulating curves that reflect the light. And if we look up into the Renoir five bathers, we have soft undulating curves that reflect the light also in this painting, as well as in the curves of the pot and the light reflecting off the candlesticks and the curves of the candlestick tables on either side of the chest. The two landscapes by Cézanne, however, with their geometric angular forms offer a sharp contrast to these soft curves. Notice the colour of the wood in the chest. This is echoed again in the redware pot and then that same colour becomes fleshy, tangible flesh in the Renoir. And then that same colour again becomes rocks and soil in the Cézanne landscapes on either side. In fact, this whole wall is a colour web of this orange tone held together also with blues and greens, so the entire wall is held together by colour. The two central beta paintings, one by Cézanne, one by Renoir, offer a lesson in contrast of Renoir and Cézanne's style in painting the nude figure. Renoir is all about soft, tangible flesh with feathery brushstrokes, Cézanne's figures are solid, sculptural, monumental, while reflecting Cézanne saying, I can distill everything in nature down to the cone, the sphere and the cube. The Cézanne landscape to the left, perhaps we can see that closer, yes we can, is rocks and trees of 1904. It is a wonderful example of his late work with his signature brushstrokes. They are almost dynamic, flickering vibrations of colour, seemingly floating in front of the surface of the work. Picasso and Matisse both said, Cézanne, he is the father of us all, without Cézanne, there would be no modern art. We're still in Room 8, and now we're just turning to the west wall. And here we have a still life by Paul Cézanne, painted in around 1892. Cézanne is known as the painter of apples. He is famous for his still lives. The Barnes has a wonderful collection of these. We have one of his masterpieces hanging right here. Cézanne's painting technique astounded his contemporaries. His hatched brushstrokes and way of building form completely out of subtle gradations of colour tones. He said, I want to do with colour, what others do with black and white. His unique perspective, he did away with the Renaissance single point perspective. He influenced artists and modern art that came after him. Notice how weighted his fruits are. The longer one looks at these apples, these oranges, these limes perhaps, the heavier they become. The whole arrangement looks absolutely haphazard, but was in fact carefully arranged by the artists using coins and wooden shims to position the fruits exactly where he wanted them. Different tones are played against each other. We have reds against greens. We have blues against oranges, making the painting vibrate with a harmony of colour. This white cloth is carefully arranged almost in a landscape-like way, providing depth and contrast. Look at the diagonal tilt of the chest, making the fruits look as if they are all about to move, to roll off the chest onto the floor. This diagonal line gives tension and drama to what usually would be a static, still life. Cézanne used the same humble Provençal objects in all his still lifes. He had a deep respect for the traditions of Provence. His fruits and objects seem to have it in a life all of their own. Cézanne once said, very poetically, People think a sugar bowl has no physiognomy or soul, but that changes around here every day. You have to take them. Cajole them, these little fellows. These glasses, these dishes, they all talk among themselves. They whisper interminable secrets. I gave up on flowers they fade too soon. Fruits, however, are more faithful. They love to have their portraits painted. They sit there and apologise for changing colour. Their essence breathes with their perfume. They come to you with all their aromas, and they tell you about the fields they have left, about the rains that nourished them, about the dawns they have watched. Here we are, upstairs on the balcony, in front of Matisse's Joy of Life, or Le Bonheur de Bivre, painted in 1905-06. This is the only painting Matisse sent to show in the salon of the autumn of 1906. It was a major statement, a masterpiece, and it is a major shift in Matisse's style. It was the largest, it is six feet by eight feet, and the most ambitious painting he had ever painted up to this point. He worked on it for over six months and made numerous studies for it. Here Matisse has taken the grand tradition of pastoral painting, but has undermined it with a looseness, a simplicity, and the use of these brilliant, non-naturalistic colours. He depicts an earthly paradise devoted to the sensual pleasures of music, dance, and love. People were absolutely shocked when they saw this in the salon of 1906. This is a wildly eclectic painting, full of illusions to different kinds of art. Greek vase painting perhaps, Persian miniatures, medieval tapestries, cave painting even, and of course referencing the works of Titian and Poussin. This competition is radically new, based on sweeping curves, not on stable architectural elements, and of course the astonishing use of non-representational colour. The figures and the landscape have this pulsating energy. We see all these arabesque lines, almost a musical energy. There are two focal points. The two large reclining figures here, one with orange hair, one with contrasting blue hair. The ring of dances here forms the other focal point, spinning us around the painting. The dance is a motif that Matisse returns to many times in his later works. This is the first time the dance appears in any of his paintings. When you are in the barn standing here in person, as I hope you will be very soon, you can see both this painting and Matisse's huge mural, the dance, at the same time across the balcony. And you can see how they relate to each other, how they engage with each other. This painting is one of the groundbreaking paintings in modern art at the beginning of the 20th century. When Picasso saw this, he was shocked and jolted into changing his style of painting, shutting himself away for almost a year to paint his response to this painting. And that was the Des Moines d'Avignon of 1907, which is now in the Museum of Modern Art. The Joy of Life hung for many years in the collection of Leo and Gertrude Stein. Dr. Barnes acquired it from a Danish collector in 1923. And here we're just going to see, we're standing on the balcony. The Joy of Life would be to your right and across the balcony and through the archways you can see the monumental, the dance. And here you can see how the walls relate to each other, as do so many walls here at the barns. Now, here we are. We are still upstairs and we are in Room 19 looking at the North Wall. This large wall here, Dr. Barnes gives us the opportunity to look at spatial complexity in paintings, meaning how do artists convey spatial depth on a flat, two-dimensional piece of canvas? The landscapes and cityscapes, we have landscapes and cityscapes here by Utrillo, by Rousseau, by De Chirico, and by Utrillo again. Show us some of the compositional strategies that artists use to convey depth or deep space within a painting. Some are sophisticated, such as the Utrillo and the De Chirico, and some are very simple, such as, or simplified, like the Rousseau, painting in his naive style, and he simply stacks lines horizontal bands. This painting here, we're going to look at this a little more closely. Let's see. This painting here on this wall is called The Arrival, painted in 1912 by Giorgio De Chirico. Shows one of his dream-like crystalline scenes of Italian piazzas. De Chirico presents a mysterious and unsettling collision of antiquity and modernity. This monumental sculpture in modern dress, with his back to us, presides over an eerily deserted square, casting this strange shadow, which is pointing to an open door. The evenly spaced arches here and on the right-hand side establish a rhythmic, deep recession in space. While everything in the foreground is so still, though in the far distance is a zone of energy with a speeding train and the penance flapping in the wind. Dr. Barnes became an early and important American supporter of De Chirico, acquiring 13 works, which includes Dr. Barnes' own portrait, which you see on the right-hand side. The two huge portraits on each end of the wall, this one here, are by Chaim Sutin and along with the Modigliani portrait of a boy in a sailor suit right here, all show flattened and compressed space. Let's just see if we can zoom into this a little bit. Here we are. Barnes has even placed 19th century New Mexican retablos above this Modigliani portrait. These are wooden folk art pieces from New Mexico from the 19th century. These simple pieces echo the frontally oriented and simplified portraits below. Here Barnes is placing folk art alongside a great European artist. The metal spatulas above these two portraits very wittingly reinforce that this is in fact flattened compressed space. Chaim Sutin let's just see if we can go across to a Sutin. Here we go. Let's put him up here. Here is a portrait of a man by Chaim Sutin. Chaim Sutin was an impoverished Russian artist living in Paris and Barnes is credited with discovering him in 1923. Barnes sought out the new and the avant-garde and he said he loved Sutin's deep rich, juicy and variegated colour. Sutin who died in Paris in 1943 influenced many American expressionist painters such as Willem de Koerning. Barnes was the first collector to buy Sutin, Modigliani and Picasso. Now we are in room 14 still upstairs and we're going to focus just on the painting in the centre of this large wall. This painting is called Scouts attacked by a tiger painted in 1904 by the French artist Henri Rousseau. This is one of the jungle scenes that made Rousseau famous. You can see again how the wall is tied together with colour and with design as well on this wall. Dr. Barnes has an extensive collection of Rousseau's work and this painting was exhibited in the salon of 1904. Rousseau's jungle paintings are fascinating. Here we are, I've got to sorry we've got to zoom out of this a little bit. Here we go. His jungle paintings are fascinating. They are almost like theatrical backdrops. Notice how there's a great silence here and how the narrative is really open to interpretation with no resolution. What is happening and to whom? His perspective is always odd. This is all part of his magic that draws us in. He is placing the characters at the centre of the composition, really like performers before an audience. The wildness of the animals is diminished perhaps by each of them seeming more like an outline. Rousseau painted in a very careful, meticulous manner. It is said he started at the top of the canvas and carefully worked his way down sort of like painting by numbers almost. If you look at the exquisite detail in the foliage and the multiple shades of green he is using here. The painting has an almost collage like quality to it perhaps. Something which fascinated Pablo Picasso who befriended the older Rousseau and bought several of his canvases. Rousseau is known as a primitive, a naive painter, which means he didn't have any formal art training and he did not start painting seriously until he was in his forties. He was charmingly convinced he would be a very famous artist one day and hang in the loo. But he had died in extreme poverty in 1910. He did of course eventually become famous and had a big influence on the surrealists who came a few decades later. Here we are in room 22 looking at the south wall. Dr. Barnes collection of West African masks and sculpture are mostly in three rooms upstairs. Dr. Barnes was among the first collectors to display African tribal art as works of art alongside great European artists. As we look at this wall we can immediately see the connection the influence that African art had on such artists as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amadeo Medigliade for example. The two portraits by Picasso, we have one here and one here painted in 1907 are actually studies for the Demoiselles d'Avignon, the head of a man and the head of a woman. The man actually never appeared in the Demoiselles d'Avignon eventually. This portrait here of Jean Ebutin by Medigliani in 1918 is one of many he made of Jean, his companion and mother of his young daughter. Let's see if we can just zoom in just a little bit here. Medigliani's portraits are immediately recognisable for the very simplified clean lines, flattened space for the stylised features of this mask like oval face with an elongated neck elongated nose and almond shaped eyes and a tiny rosebud mouth. He had the ability though to still convey a sense of how the sitter actually looked. He was intrigued with ancient Egyptian art and sculpture as well. With Jean we get the sense of her gentle, calm grace, her blank eyes, another feature of his portraits. She is seemingly looking inward perhaps. Her hair is arranged in this conical style which actually echoes this mask down here in the case down here. The colour palette is a lovely balance of pinks and trusset tones against the cool blue tones of the overall painting. Medigliani died tragically at the age of 35 in 1920 and Jean equally tragically pregnant with their second child committed suicide the following day. If we just move across we can note also the incredible symmetry of this wall. We could draw a line all the way down from the centre of the wall down through the case. The African masks and sculpture in the collection come mainly from West Africa the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Mali and date mostly from the 19th century. Barnes bought all these African pieces from the Parisian dealer Paul Guillaume who was instrumental in showing these as works of art and introducing them to the French art world in the early 1900s. Well I hope you have enjoyed the virtual tour of just a small portion of the rich varied and deep collection of the Barnes Foundation we have only actually skimmed the surface together. I do hope you are able to visit the Barnes sometime in the very near future to explore and discover its riches for yourselves when the Barnes and the world have opened back up to us again. Thank you very much goodbye.