Nashville Arts Magazine

My Favorite Painting | Henry Barnes

Annecy, France

by Anita Bailey, Marketing Consultant,

Bailey Marketing Strategies, LLC

Henry Barnes does an amazing job of capturing the beauty of an area of the world that truly captivates me—that corner of France, Switzerland, and Italy where medieval towns are nestled in the foothills of the mountains, overlooking pristine lakes. In my mind’s eye, this is the way I think of these towns—when the light hits the buildings at the perfect time of day.

I feel connected to this area because my grandmother’s ancestors emigrated from there. Although she never traveled very far from her home in Maryland, she spoke of the place where her family lived two hundred years earlier, Vevey, Switzerland, on Lake Geneva. I first visited the town in the late ’70s, which started my love affair with this part of the world. I fell in love with this painting when I saw it, and then I discovered the town that inspired it, Annecy, France, was just 100 kilometers from Vevey. My husband and I bought the painting shortly after my grandmother died. Whenever I look at this piece, I think of her.

Whether playing championship basketball, serving with the U.S. Navy, or pursuing his love of music, Henry Barnes has always followed his heart, which has led him to his career as a fine artist. His principal art studies include intensive work with Constantin and Roman Chatov, studying portraiture and figure. It was with the Chatov brothers that he developed his color palette and achieved the feeling of light in his paintings. He also studied with New York artist Daniel Greene and with Yves Brayer, a noted French artist in Paris. Barnes creates landscapes, still lifes, and portraiture.

The artist’s works are included in many corporate, institutional and private collections. One of the most notable is a series of ten-foot-square paintings of each of the twelve apostles, commissioned for the Shrine of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Atlanta’s oldest building.

Henry Barnes’ work is represented by a number of galleries in major cities in the Southeast, including Atlanta where he works and makes his home, Charlotte, Nashville, Knoxville, and Florence, Alabama. Barnes is represented by Richland Fine Art in Nashville.

www.henrybarnesstudio.com