Barnes Foundation hosts unique and unparalleled collection of French art

Founded by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the Barnes Foundation is an educational and cultural jewel on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The Barnes Foundation attracts hundreds of thousands of people each year to immerse themselves in one of the most recognized and revered collections of art.

"It's an unusually rich institution, in the sense that our holdings are so remarkable," Executive Director and President of the Barnes Foundation Thomas Collins said. "He collected exceptional work. He had a great eye and a lot of personal resource and a strategy, and so you will not see this density of assets almost anywhere in the world."

Collins says the riches are so remarkable he still finds new gifts in every gallery.

"People realize when they're here that you cannot digest even a fraction of this in one visit or even 10 visits, 20 visits. I've been in here hundreds of times, and I'm still discovering new things," he said.

And, among the 12,000 square feet and 4,000 works of art is an unparalleled collection of French art.

"We have more Renoirs than any other institution or private collection in the world. We have 181 paintings by Renoir," Collins said. "We also have 69 Cezanne's, which by last count is more Cezanne's than all of the Parisian museums combined."

There are also 59 pieces by Matisse and 46 by Picasso at the Barnes.

“He was such a Francophile, and he collected all sorts of art, but he loved French modernism," Deputy Director for Research, Interpretation and Education at the Barnes Foundation Martha Lucy explained. “It is astonishing what Albert Barnes assembled.”

"The cultural assets in Paris are exceptional," Collins told NBC10. "However, you don't have to travel to Paris to experience the great impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modernist work that Barnes emphasized in his collecting."

A letter from Barnes in 1925 depicts his hard work with him writing that he's been working in the gallery practically every day and night while rearranging the collection.

"He would get up in the middle of the night and go over to the gallery and rethink the groupings. He was obsessed," Lucy said. "Everything that you see in the collection is exactly the way that Albert Barnes left when he died in 1951."

An appreciation of the works untouched as well as fresh perspectives with this summer's Matisse and Renoir exhibition can be seen in the Roberts Gallery. It features one of the most iconic pictures in the Barnes collection: Matisse's Joy of Life which was highly controversial for its color in 1906.

"It was so shocking. It was so radical. No one could understand it," Barnes Foundation curator Cindy Kang told NBC10. "The trees are red and orange and pink and purple. But at the same time, there is a harmoniousness to the painting because Matisse knew how to perfectly balance color."

Also featured from Matisse is The Music Lesson.

"Two of these major, monumental, iconic pictures by Matisse, you can stand in one place and go like this, and see them both, and it gives you chills," Kang said.

And the installation is just as exciting.

It's a treasure trove of gifts from Barnes for us to forever embrace, interpret and admire.

"He was building this collection as an educational institution. I think he was building it out of a personal love for French art," Lucy said. "it is pretty remarkable what he did for Philadelphia by bringing all of this art here."

It is such a gift to have these treasures so easily accessible to enjoy.

The current exhibition "Matisse and Renoir: New Encounters at the Barnes" will be on display until Sept. 8 in the Roberts Gallery.