William Glackens Notecard Folio

A native of Philadelphia, William J. Glackens (1870–1938) began his career by drawing scenes from everyday life and rapidly became the premier illustrator for leading publishers of large-circulation magazines, including Scribner’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier’s. In 1895 Glackens traveled to Paris, where he painted in a subdued realist style influenced by old masters such as Hals and Velázquez.

From 1900 and 1907 Glackens’s pictures took on a liveliness that reflected the influence of Édouard Manet. Relinquishing his somber color palette, the artist—under the influence of his American colleagues Ernest Lawson and Maurice Prendergast—systematically transformed his style, adopting the bright color intensity and technique of Impressionism.

Around 1911 Glackens and Albert C. Barnes, founder of the Barnes Foundation, renewed a friendship they had begun in high school. The following year Barnes asked Glackens to go to Paris to purchase a selection of modern paintings. Accompanied by expatriate American painter Alfred Maurer, Glackens brought home canvases by such artists as Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso, which became the core of the Barnes Foundation’s collection. A lifelong friend of Glackens, Barnes assembled for the foundation the definitive group of the artist’s mature Impressionist work, including seventy-one paintings, drawings, and pastels.

Contains five each of the following notecards:
Zinnias in a Striped Blue Vase, c. 1915
Flowers in a Quimper Pitcher, c. 1913–1915