Biography from Grogan & Company:
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Home Is Where the Art Is:
20th-Century Women Visual Artists of Prince Edward Island
Researcher/Writer: Sandy Kowalik
Georgie Read Barton, a student of Mary Allison Doull, achieved international acclaim in a career that spanned over 75 years. Her list of credits is impressive. She was one of the first women ever to be admitted into the Salmagundi Club, the oldest existing art club in the world. She was listed in the Who's Who in American Art, The World Who's Who of Women, and The Dictionary of International Biographies, and was winner of many awards including a citation from The American Artists Professional League "for effective action and sustained devotion in the cause of fine art" (see Ogle).
During the 20th century, one art movement followed close on the heels of the last: Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Photo Realism, and Post Modernism. In this century of "isms," Barton consistently painted realistic landscapes in oil.
Avant-garde attitudes almost caused Georgie Read to give up painting altogether. There was disdain from the art elite toward those who "painted like a camera" (see Canady). There was a belief that copying from nature showed a lack of artistic imagination. Yet Barton found an endless source of inspiration in rendering scenes as she saw them and had the self-confidence to follow her heart. She credited her sea-faring father, Captain John Read, with helping to shape her drive and determination. And like Doull, Buote, and Haszard, Barton had a father who financially supported a daughter's education.
Georgie Read attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, from 1924 to 1927, coming back to the Island to teach at Edgehill School. In 1930, "scared to death" (Ogle), she set out for New York, where she studied at the Art Students League. She was Director of Art at the Ottawa Ladies College from 1932 to 1940 and later taught at St. Agnes School in Albany, New York. In 1942, at the age of 40, she married fellow painter George Barton and had a son. Throughout it all Barton continued to paint.
Georgie Read Barton had a lifelong fascination with capturing atmospheric change through colour and tone, light and shadow. She spent many years in Westchester County, near the Hudson River in New York and was instrumental in the development of the Hudson Valley Art Association. On PEI, The Barton Art Club introduced many to the techniques of outdoor landscape painting. Continuing the tradition, Barton's students are now teaching a new generation of artists.
Barton painted into her nineties, often going back to the same location. Her paintings have become an historical record of the changes on the Island during the 20th century: the haystacks of yesterday are the rolled bales of today. Farms active in the 1940s are now abandoned ruins.
Georgie Read Barton died on March 22, 1994.
Submitted by Allyson Lee, Grogan & Company, April 2008
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