Richard Barthe (January 28,1901-March 5,1989)

Was born in Bay St.Louis,Mississippi,to Richmond Barthe, Sr.,and Marine Clementine

Robateau.His father died before Richmond was a year old,and his mother's sewing supported the family.She later remarried William Franklin,and old friend and Richmond godfather.William worked in a various odd jobs,including as an ice man,delivering ice throughout the rural community.According to Richmond he was artistically inclined from a a very young age.In a history of African American Artists,he quoted as saying,"When i was crawling on the floor,my mother gave me paper and pencil to play with.It kept me quiet and she did her errands.At six years old I started painting.A lady my mother sewed gave me a set of watercolors.By that time I could draw pretty well."As a teenager his artistic talent had attracted attention among several of his mother's clients,among his stepfather's ice customers as well.Richmond used to help in the delivery during the summer.One of the customers,who knew of and admired his work,told the young boy that he would injure himself carrying such large chunks of ice all day long.She arranged for him to get a job with the Pond family in New Orleans,a very wealthy with several homes and interests in supporting the arts.Richmond stayed with the Pond for several years,working as their houseboy while being encouraged to continue drawing and painting.Around this time,he met Lyle Saxon, a writer working for the New Orleans Times-Picayune,and the two men became good friends.Lyle was very interested in Richmond work and remained a champion of the artist after he became a well-known novelists.Around 1923,a Catholic priest took an interests in his work and began looking for a local art school for him to attend.In the South,no school would admit an African American,so the priest paid for him to attend the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.Here,Richmond rapidly developed as an artists,studying with several important teachers.His most influential teacher was Charles Schroeder.It was ultimately Charles who suggested that he try sculpture.Charles did not intend to suggest that Richmond,who was mainly a painter,then shift his medium,but for him to incorporate three dimensions into his art.It turned out,that he was a gifted sculptor,as was immediately apparent from the creation of his first busts in art school.An art institute show included three of his works.From that show Richmond received his first his first commission as a sculptor.The Lake County Children's Home in Gary, Indiana,his work and hired him to do busts of Henry O.Tanner & Tossaint L'Ouverture for its home.Richmond who had taken no classes in sculpting,began a career as a sculptor.His talents so impressed his teachers at the Institute that they advised him him not to take any classes,fearing that formal training might ruin the creative spark in his work.Having taking up sculpture,Richmond began drawing the kind of critical attention artists dream about but rarely achieve at such a young age.In 1929,just out of art school,he received an offer for a one-man show in New York,a tremendous honor.He was reluctant to accept,feeling he had not fully developed yet,not wanting to show in an important art center such as New york until he had refined his form more.Richmond declined the offer and spent a studying at the Art Students League in New York.In 1930,after returning to Chicago,he had a large show at the Women's City Club.The show was a major success and it won him  Julius Rosenwald Fund Fellowship.In 1931,Richmond felt he was finally ready for a New York show and was one was arranged at the Caz-Delbo Gallery,a prestigious showcase.his work at this show drew high praise and he moved to to the city when his Rosenwald fellowship was continued.In 1933 he exhibited  at the Chicago World's Fair and in 1934,Xavier University in New Orleans awarded him an honorary master of arts degree.In 1934,Richmond had a show at the Whitney Museum of  American Art in New York,the preeminent contemporary art museum in the country.After the show,the museum purchased three of his sculptures for its permanent collection.By this time,Richmond was selling so much work that for the first time he could abandon side jobs and devote himself entirely to art.Later in 1934,he went to Europe where the cultural heritage he observed fascinated him and where he also made several important sales to private collectors.In 1939,he held his second one-man show in New York.It was his largest exhibition to date,including 18 bronze works,and was held at the Arden Galleries.Again,critical response was ethusiastic and on the strength of the work  exhibited at these shows, Richmond was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1940 & in 1941.In 1943,the Boxer was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,America's largest and most important museum.After the second World War,the world of art began to change drastically on abstraction or distorted representations of realty.He was not interested in these trends and was increasingly forgotten by the artistic establishment.As a result,Richmond began devoting much of his time to making portraits busts for wealthy New York clients,especially people involved in the theatre.During and after the war,he made busts of John Gielgud and Maurice Evans.Later works were of Lawrence Olivier,Kathrine Cornell,and Judith Anderson.In 1946,he was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.By the end of the 1940s ,he had grown tired of the art scene in New York (and depressed over his exclusion from it) and he bought a house in Jamaica on the advice of his doctor who told him that living in the city was hurting his health.Over the next several years,he became a tourist attraction on the island,while continuing to work.In 1953,he completed a forty-foot statue for the city of Port au Prince,Haiti,depicting Jean Jacques Dessalines,leader of the 1804 revolution.He also designed several Haitian coins that are still in use.At first Richmond enjoyed the prestige of being an expatriate black artist living in seclusion on a small Caribbean island,by 1969,he had grown restless and decided to move to Europe.He first went to Swizerland and then,in 1970,he moved to Florance .He stayed in Italy for the next seven years,then sold everything he owned and moved to California,where he rented an apartment from an admirer.Growing increasingly imppoverished and old,and getting sick as well, he became charity case.the actor James Garner,who had only recently met him was shocked that he should be living so poorly and began secretly paying his rent and medical bills.Other artist and actors began to help.The city of Pasadena renamed Barthe's street Barthe Drive.A fund-raising drive was also mounted to found the Barthe's Historical Society and to fund thirty Barthe scholarships for artists.