William Glackens comes home

William Glackens is finally getting a proper homecoming.

The Philadelphia-born painter who helped launch one of the 20th century's distinctive American art movements as well as one of the world's greatest collections of impressionist and early modernist art, is the subject of a much-anticipated full-scale museum retrospective opening Saturday at the Barnes Foundation and running through Feb. 2.

"William Glackens" is the first complete assessment of the artist's work since a 1966 show mounted by the City Art Museum in St. Louis, which traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York but never made it to Philadelphia. In fact, it is likely that the Barnes show, featuring 90 works. is the first retrospective exhibition ever in the city that shaped him, educated him, inspired him, and often supported him with jobs, friendships and patrons.

In turn, Glackens was a seminal figure pushing, in his work at the turn of the 20th century, for everyday realism, which found full expression with a group of painters known as "the Eight," and with the broader Ashcan School.

Glackens, who died in 1938, also was a lifelong pal of Albert C. Barnes, founder of the eponymous foundation. With Barnes' money in his pocket, he traveled to Paris and acquired the first of the great modernist paintings that still hang in the Barnes galleries.

This will be the fifth special exhibition mounted at the Barnes Foundation since it opened in its new home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in May 2012. All have sought to relate in some fashion to the specifics of the Barnes - either to its spectacular collection of impressionist, postimpressionist, and African art, or to the founder's personal interests and activities.

But none of these special exhibitions has had quite the Barnes-Philadelphia juice of this show - the story, as former Barnes curator Judith F. Dolkart tells it, of "two Philadelphia boys of modest backgrounds" who "made good in their adult lives."

Glackens, born and raised here, met Barnes at Central High School, then went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and spend time painting in Europe. For his part, Barnes went on to make a fortune in patent medicine, then began to translate his wealth into art - assisted by his old friend.

He sought Glackens' advice, engaging him in long conversations about art and artists. How did artists see? How did they translate what they saw into visual compositions on a two-dimensional surface? Glackens told Barnes, who was already dipping his toe in the European art market, that he should take his "fuzzy Corots," put them in a closet, and "start over."

Barnes, no dummy, knew what he didn't know. He gave Glackens $20,000 and sent him to Europe in 1912. The charge? Buy the best modern art he could find. Glackens returned with canvases by Renoir, Picasso, Cézanne, Pissarro, and the now-famous Van Gogh Postman of 1889, among other things.

Barnes was soon buying on his own during voracious collecting trips to Europe. That he was heavily influenced initially by Glackens can hardly be questioned. He also admired Glackens' paintings and works on paper, and acquired several, which can be seen every day at the Barnes.

The current retrospective was put together by independent curator Avis Berman and has already traveled to the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale (associated with Nova Southeastern University) and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, N.Y., on eastern Long Island.

For its Philadelphia installation, Dolkart arranged for a number of special loans. This exhibition will display virtually all the works Glackens showed in the Eight's famous 1908 exhibition, held in defiance of the conservative institutions that had rejected them. (The rest of the Eight were Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, and George Luks).

"That's very, very exciting," said Dolkart, who resigned from the Barnes in July to become director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. She returned to Philadelphia to oversee the Barnes installation. "You'll get a sense of the totality of [Glackens'] career," she said. "We feel lucky to be able to present it."

Peg Zminda, interim Barnes president, said the Glackens-Barnes relationship has particular relevance to Philadelphia, but Glackens remains relatively unknown, even here.

"There hasn't been a Glackens [show] in 50 years, so in some ways he's kind of underappreciated in the art world," she said. "But the work is really beautiful."

William Glackens

 Saturday through Feb. 2 at the Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Closed Tuesdays.   Adults, $22-25; seniors, $20-23; students with valid ID, $10; children, $10. 215-278-7000, www.barnesfoundation.org EndText

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