Artist Robert Carlyle Barritt painted in the tradition of the Pennsylvania Impressionists.  Born June 23, 1895 in Pittston, PA, he lived in West Pittston, PA on the banks of the Susquehanna River until 1957.  That year he and his wife, Sinclaire Westbrook Barritt, moved to Charlottesville, in her native Virginia.  There he continued to paint portraits and landscapes. He died in 1979 in Lexington, Virginia and is buried in Stonewall Jackson Cemetery.

He was educated at Bellefonte Academy. Barritt attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the New York School of Art and the Manhattan School of Art where he was curator for two years. He later studied with Norman Rockwell and New Hope painter R. Sloan Bredin.  Barritt served in the Army in World War I where he drew surgeries for the Medical Corps.

His works, portraits and landscapes in oils, are found in homes, businesses, churches and other institutions from North Carolina to New York.  He instructed art classes at Lehigh University and the Princeton Sketch Club.  He exhibited at a number of venues including the Audubon Artists; American Veterans Society of Artists; the University of Virginia; the De Cordova and Dana Museum, Lincoln, MA; in  New Hope, PA; Johnstown, PA; the Norfolk (VA) Art Museum; Scranton, PA; the Butler Art Museum, Youngstown, Ohio; Wanamakers, Philadelphia, PA and the Society of Independent Artists, the Barbizon-Plaza Gallery and the National Art Club all of New York City and in one-man shows from North Carolina to Pennsylvania.  Prizes were won at Wanamakers and the De Cordova and Dana Museum.

During World War II he painted over 100 portraits of men and women in service.  In his lifetime, he often painted portraits of children.  He would meet the child and take numerous photographs and make notations as to paint colors he would use.  In a rather brief time, he would return the finished portrait, which he framed himself.  In the Impressionist tradition, he made many of his own frames, painting or gilding them.  He favored wood with worm holes and a light wash of color on the frame to compliment the painting it held.

His landscapes most often depicted rural scenes from the Pennsylvania Poconos or the Blue Ridge Mountains or the areas around the Delaware, Lehigh, Lackawanna and Susquehanna rivers.  Many landscapes feature scenes from New Hope, Pennsylvania where he often spent the summer with his family. Rockport, Maine and Williamsburg, Virginia were also favorite painting spots.  The coal mines, so prevalent in the area of Pittston, inspired a number of paintings.

He almost always signed his work in red print letters on the lower right hand of the painting.  The signature reads “Robt. Carlyle Barritt.” Barritt rarely dated his work.  He often used blues and greens to great advantage in his landscapes and had a knack for capturing the ever-changing skies of his native Pennsylvania.

Barritt’s son, Westbrook Barritt, says his father was a workaholic who waited on customers in his father’s paint store during the day and painted late into the night at his studio upstairs in the family’s large house on Susquehanna Avenue.  Barritt and his wife and three children shared the house with his parents, Walter and Mary Neilson Barritt.

Barritt met his wife, Sinclaire Westbrook, at art school in New York.  She was from Danville, Virginia.  They married in 1920 and lived in West Pittston.  The couple had three children, Westbrook, Cameron and Joan.  Westbrook remembers his father always had time to play with his children. Indeed, letters of Robert Carlyle Barritt’s mother, Mary Barritt, chronicle the comings and goings of an extremely busy family who had many friends and many interests.

After moving to Charlottesville, Virginia, in the late 1950s, Barritt kept busy painting portraits, both from private and public commissions.  He moved to Lexington in 1977.  He had claimed that “he would always have his painting,” but his son recalls that Barritt began to lose his sense of color.  After a period of ill health, Barritt died on February 7, 1979 in Lexington.

He was a member of the American Artists Professional League, the Audubon Artists and  the American Veterans Artists Society, the Wyoming Valley Art Society, the Albemarle Art  League, and the Buck Hill Artists Association.

Sources include:
Brochures by the artist, generally undated.
Family knowledge, including conversations with Westbrook Barritt, son of the artist.
Who’s Who in American Art, 1962 edition, page 35
Information from Roy Wood of New Jersey.

Information provided by Winifred Barritt Walsh, granddaughter of the artist.