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Highlights

Frank A. Barney (American, 1862 – 1954)

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

"Nature has been his exacting and uncompromising teacher, defying him to meet her challenges, but his love or her has been abiding. She has lured him from beaten paths to the depths of the forest. She has beckoned him to the waterfall. She has taken him to the shaded brookside. She has set him down at her favorite spots on the shores of many lakes. She has posed her broad vistas of hills and valleys, and she has led him to enchanting mountains." [1]

The quintessential regional artist, Frank A. Barney, the "Dean of Auburn artists," [2] was born in 1862 in Union Springs, on Lake Cayuga in the Finger Lakes of New York State, and except for study at the Art Students League in New York City and in Paris, France, he remained in the Finger Lakes region all his life.

When Barney was 10 the family moved to Groton. There he received his first lessons in oil painting from a carriage painter, who was also a landscape painter, for whom young Barney worked. [3]. It was here that he painted his first landscape at age 13 [4]. The family moved to Scipio Center when Barney was 16, where his father ran a general store and hotel. He worked for his father for a year, but returned to Union Springs to work in a drug store. He remained there until 1881 when he moved to Auburn where he, again, worked in a drug store [5].

During this time, he continued to paint and in 1887 he opened a studio in Auburn and took instruction at the Art Students League in New York City [6], followed by study under William Merritt Post in 1889 [7]. In that year, one of his canvases won distinction at the National Academy exhibition in New York [8 syracuse-herald-journal-dec-15-1954-p-59] and attracted the attention of Thomas Moss Osborne, who offered him a loan to study in Europe [9 syracuse-herald-journal-dec-15-1954-p-59]. In 1895, he went abroad and studied one summer under Louis Paul Dessar, a noted landscape and figure painter at Etampes, France. While in France he visited Barbezieux [10]. Barney did paint portraits at times; his most prized portrait is one of himself, painting during a period he spent in the West before the turn of the century. [11].

Barney was commissioned by the Rev. Dr. John Timothy Stone to paint a series of scenes in Colorado’s Estes park in 1920 [12], and in 1928 one of his Finger Lakes paintings was used for the first time on the cover of the Finger Lakes Association’s booklet — "A Scene typical of each of the Finger Lakes beneath the benediction of sunshine" [13].

In 1938 Barney conducted a summer school in landscape painting, sponsored by the Cayuga Museum of History and Art. Revered by the citizens of Auburn, more than 500 of his paintings are said to hang in Auburn homes. Auburnians aver that in Auburn "no home is quite complete without a Barney." [15].

Barney was a member of the Salmagundi Club [1897]. He exhibited: National Academy of Design (1891-97); Rochester Art Club (1892); New York State Fair (1897); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1903); Chicago, IL (1907); Syracuse Museum of Fine Art (1911-1919); Society of Independent Artists (1922); Binghampton Museum of Fine Art (1936, solo); Finger lakes Regional Show (1939, first prize, 1946, prize) [16].

Barney died December 14, 1954 at the age of 91, just three months before his 92nd birthday. Paraphrasing his words before his death, he has "folded his easel, closed his paint box and threw away his brushes" [17].

Use only by permission of Bedford Fine Art Gallery.

Sources:

[1], [3], [5], [11], [15], [17] https://newspaperarchive.com/syracue-post-standard-sep-12-1954-p-69/

[2], [7], [8], [9], [12] https://newspaperarchive.com/syracuse-herald-journal-dec-15-1954-p-59/

[4] https://newspaperarchive.com/syracuse-herald-journal-may-18-1952-p-83/

[6], [10] https://newspaperarchive.com/syracuse-herald-apr-10-1898-p-21/

[13] https://newspaperarchive.com/free-press-and-sentinel-may-18-1928-p-2/

[16] Falk, Peter, ed., 1999, Who Was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison, CT.

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230 South Juliana St.
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