Richmond Barthe

BARTHE, James Richmond (January 28, 1901 - March 5, 1989) is an African-American sculptor recognized as one of the foremost sculptors of his generation, and is known for his many public works, including the Toussaint L’Ouverture Monument in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and a sculpture of Rose McClendon for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House.

Richmond Barthe was born in St. Louis, Missouri in January of 1901. His father died at 22, when Richmond was only one month old, leaving his mother to raise him alone. Barthe spent his early years in New Orleans, Louisiana.

His mother influenced young Richmond’s aesthetic development, and he showed great promise as an artist at a young age, but as an African American in the American South, he was barred from enroling in any of the art schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, near his home. When Barthe was twelve, his work was shown at the county fair in Mississippi, and he continued to develop remarkably as an artist.

At fourteen, Barthe left school to take a job as houseboy and handyman, but he still spent his free time drawing. At eighteen, having moved to New Orleans, he won first prize for a sketch he submitted in the Parish competition.

Lyle Saxon of the Times Picayune newspaper, tried unsuccessfully against racist policy to get Barthe registered in art school in the New Orleans. In 1924, with the aid of a Catholic priest, the Reverend Harry Kane S.S.I, and with less than a high school education and no formal training in art, Barthe was admitted to the Art Institute of Chicago. During the next four years Barthe followed a curriculum structured for majors in painting. During his four years of study he worked as a busboy at a small cafe. His work caught the attention of Dr. Charles Maceo Thompson, a patron of the arts and supporter of many talented young black artists. Barthe was a flattering portrait painter, and Dr. Thompson helped him to secure many lucrative commissions from the city’s affluent black citizens.

During his senior year he was introduced to sculpture by his anatomy teacher. He began modeling in clay to gain a better understanding of the third dimension in his painting. This transition proved to be, according to him, a turning point in his career. He exhibited two busts in the Negro History Week Exhibition and in the April 1928 annual exhibition of the Chicago Art League. He received much critical praise and numerous commissions following this.

Following his graduation from The Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, Barthe moved to New York and established his first studio in Harlem. During the next two decades, he built his reputation as a sculptor. By 1934, his reputation was so well established that he was awarded his first solo show at the Caz Delbo Galleries in New York City. Barthe experienced success after success and was considered by writers and critics as one of the leading “moderns” of his time. Eventually, the tense environment and violence of the city began to take its toll, and he decided to abandon his life of fame and move to Jamaica, West Indies. His career flourished in Jamaica and he remained there until the mid-1960’s when ever-growing violence forced him to yet again move. For the next five years he lived in Switzerland, Spain, and Italy before eventually settling in Pasadena, California, where he worked on his memoirs and most importantly, editioned many of his works with the financial assistance of the actor, James Garner, until his death in 1989

Some of his major public works included his Toussaint L’Ouverture Monument and General Dessalines Monument, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Green Pastures: Walls of Jericho for the Harlem River Housing Project, and a sculpture of Rose McClendon, the African American actress, for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House. His pieces are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among others.

Richmond Barthe received many honors during his career, including the Rosenwald Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and membership in the National Academy of Arts and Letters. Barthe also received awards for interracial justice and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was the recipient of the Audubon Artists Gold Medal in 1950.

Barthe once said that “all my life I have be interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man.”

Barthe was gay and may have been lovers with Richard Bruce Nugent.

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

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