Ralph Barton

Ralph Waldo Emerson Barton (August 14, 1891 – May 19, 1931) was an American cartoonist and caricaturist of actors and other celebrities. His work was in heavy demand through the 1920s but was nearly forgotten soon after his death at 39.

Early life Barton was born in Kansas City, Missouri on August 14, 1891, the youngest of Abraham Pool and Catherine Josephine (Wigginton) Barton's four children. His father was an attorney by profession, but around the time of Ralph's birth made a career change to publish journals on metaphysics. His mother, an accomplished portrait painter, ran an art studio. The young Barton showed his mother's aptitude for art, and by the time he was in his mid-teens he had already seen several of his cartoons and illustrations published in The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Journal-Post. Buoyed by this success, in 1908 Ralph Barton dropped out of Kansas City's Central High School before graduation. He moved to Chicago in 1909 to attend the Art Institute of Chicago, but soon found he didn't "like Chicago or Chicago people and worst of all the art institute. I could learn twice as much at work," he confided in a letter to his mother.

alt=An interior sketch by illustrator Ralph Barton depicting two flappers being greeted by a Frenchman at a cafe who is kissing their hand. Much of Barton's work from the mid-1920s onward was for The New Yorker magazine, which he joined as an advisory editor from its very beginning in 1924. He would also be a stockholder in the publication. Other prominent magazines of the era to feature his work were Collier's, Photoplay, Vanity Fair, Judge, and Harper's Bazaar. While many would be published unsigned, there was no mistaking Barton's unique style. He illustrated books as well, including Anita Loos's hugely popular Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. With the urging of friend Charlie Chaplin, Barton also made one movie, Camille. The short film featured such notables as Paul Robeson, Ethel Barrymore, and Sinclair Lewis. It pictured dozens of celebrity actors including Clara Bow, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford and Louise Brooks. The illustration was later printed on fabric and turned into a dress.

At the height of his popularity, Barton enjoyed not only the acquaintance of the famous, but a solid and impressive income. All of this concealed a terribly unhappy life. He was beset by bipolar disorder. A self-portrait, painted around 1925 is inscribed "with apologies to Greco and God," and shows a drawn and unhappy figure. A year later he wrote, "The human soul would be a hideous object if it were possible to lay it bare."

Personal life and death Each of Barton's four marriages ended in divorce. His fourth wife was the French composer Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) who was a member of Les Six. They were married in Ridgefield, Connecticut on December 3, 1926, and she obtained a divorce on April 20, 1931. His suicide note said he had irrevocably "lost the only woman I ever loved" (the actress Carlotta Monterey had divorced Barton in 1926 and married Eugene O'Neill in 1929), and that he feared his worsening bipolar disorder was approaching insanity. He wrote: "I have had few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife and house to house, visited great countries of the worldbut I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up twenty-four hours of the day." Almost immediately, his reputation diminished; several years after his death, a caricature of George Gershwin sold for a mere $5.

Exhibition catalog.

Essays and reporting

Critical studies and reviews of Barton's work Bruce Kellner. The Last Dandy: Ralph Barton, American Artist, 1891-1931. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991. John Updike. Just Looking: Essays on Art, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989.