Alice Pike Barney
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alice Pike Barney (born Alice Pike, January 14, 1857 – 1931) was an American painter. She was active in Washington, D.C. and worked to make Washington into a center of the arts.
Barney was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.[1] At age 17 she became engaged to the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Alice's mother considered the match unsuitable due to the age difference -- she was seventeen, he thirty-three -- and insisted that they wait to marry. While he was away on a two-year expedition in Africa, she instead married Albert Clifford Barney, son of a wealthy manufacturer of railway cars in Dayton, Ohio.[2]
In 1882 Barney and her family spent the summer at New York's Long Beach Hotel, where Oscar Wilde happened to be speaking on his American lecture tour. Wilde spent the day with Alice and her daughter Natalie on the beach; their conversation changed the course of Alice's life, inspiring her to pursue art seriously despite her husband's disapproval.[3] She studied under Carolus-Duran and James McNeill Whistler, and had solo shows at major galleries including the Corcoran Gallery of Art.[4]
In later years, she invented and patented mechanical devices, wrote and performed in several plays and an opera,[5] and worked to promote the arts in Washington, D.C. Many of her paintings are now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[6]
She converted to the Bahá'í Faith around 1900.[7]
Barney had two daughters. The older, Natalie Clifford Barney (1876 – 1972), was a writer who hosted a salon in Paris for over 60 years. The younger, Laura Clifford Barney (1879 – 1974), compiled and translated Some Answered Questions, an important text in the Bahá'í Faith.[8]
Albert died in 1902. In 1911, at age 53, she married 23-year-old Christian Hemmick; their engagement resulted in worldwide press attention. They had divorced by 1920.[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Kling, Jean L. (1994). Alice Pike Barney: Her Life and Art. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 24. ISBN 1-56098-344-2.
- ^ Rodriguez, Suzanne (2002). Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. New York: HarperCollins, 15-22. ISBN 0-06-093780-7.
- ^ Rodriguez, 30-31.
- ^ Haskell, Susan; Zora Martin Felton. Record Unit 7473, Alice Pike Barney Papers, circa 1889-1995. Smithsonian Institution Archives. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
- ^ Rodriguez, 184.
- ^ Alice Pike Barney: Biography. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
- ^ Rodriguez, 141.
- ^ Rodriguez, 163.
- ^ Rodriguez, 209-210, 236.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Barney, Alice Pike |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cincinnati, Ohio |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1931 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Los Angeles, California |
