Career
Barnes spent a year as resident physician in a sanitarium, went to Berlin in 1894 to study physiological chemistry, and entered the University of Heidelberg in 1899. Returning to the United States, Barnes originated and manufactured two proprietary drugs, and at thirty-five was a millionaire. He began purchasing paintings in the early 1900's; within a few years he was devoting his full time to collecting. He early appreciated the merits of Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, and Renoir, before their acceptance by most critics, and formed a valuable collection. Barnes also assembled a fine collection of old masters, sculpture, furniture, and Pennsylvania handicrafts. In 1922 he established the Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pa., endowing it with $10,000,000, to give free instruction in art to deserving students. Early in the foundation's history Barnes himself lectured. He wrote The Art in Painting (1925) and collaborated on French Primitives and Their Forms from their Origin to the End of the Fifteenth Century (1931), The Art of Henri Matisse (1933), The Art of Renoir (1935), and The Art of Cézanne(1939). Barnes was an officer of the Legion of Honor.