Waiting on Will Barnet

Probably about 10 years ago, I was perusing the online auction site auctionbyemail.com, when I came upon an interesting, signed piece of art featuring a wistful girl blowing a bubble in front of a window while an upside-down parrot looked on. The colors were vivid and blocky… almost geometric… and the girl's hairstyle told me it was probably from the '70s. I really liked it. Not to re-sell but to keep for myself. Not large, it was probably around 10x12 inches framed. I placed a bid. Bidding on this site goes from Sunday through noon on Saturday. Long story short, I won the piece for less than $100. I was thrilled! I picked the print up at the auction house in Leominster. I was enchanted by it. Signed and numbered by the artist, Will Barnett, it was called "Silent Seasons – Summer" and he'd painted the original on linen in 1967. Will Barnet was a successful "American visual artist and teacher, known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints depicting the human figure and animals, both in casual scenes of daily life and in transcendent dreamlike worlds" according to Wikipedia. He was born in Beverly, Massachusetts in 1911 and passed at 101 years old in 2012 in New York City. Considered a graphic artist, his style evolved over the years, from impressionistic to abstract and figurative. He was successful both in his art sales and his teaching career. While not in the Rembrandt range, lithographs signed by Will Barnet usually go for $3,000 to $7,000. Thrilled with my luck, I took the piece to my friend, Ken Spector at New England Art Exchange to confirm what I had was indeed a significant piece. With his great, suspicious eyebrows arched, he told me, no, Barnet's lithos were much larger. When I pointed out the pencil signature and number, he hesitated for a moment but then got out his loop (a magnifying glass device) and again told me, no. This was not an original signed print. It was probably a bookplate and through the loop he could tell the signature had been reproduced due to its pixelation. Still somewhat early in my vintage/antique collecting years, I was irritated at the auction house and my own stupidity. How easily I'd been duped! Very much to their credit, the auction house refunded my money. Within a couple weeks it was back up on the site for bid again, but with the description altered to avoid any guarantee of the signed piece's veracity. Ever since then, I kind of wished that I'd kept the little print. I really liked it, but my emotions had got the best of me and I wasn't about to keep a "fake." I wrote an article for Pickin' & Pokin' right after this experience and have still followed Will Barnet on auction sites ever since, hoping to get another chance at "Silent Seasons – Summer," only the real thing this time. I went to a Will Barnet gallery show in Ogunquit, Maine a few years back. It was cool but they didn't have any of the four pieces that made up the original "Silent Seasons" series Barnet had painted. The other day, suffering from the first cold I'd had in a few years, I was poking around on my computer when I should have been outside raking and I came upon a site, Colossal (thisiscolossol.com) that I must have subscribed to long ago. It's an art/educational site and its terrific graphics sent me down an artsy rabbit hole. Circling back to Will Barnet to see if "Summer" was for sale anywhere at a price within my reach, I found out the original painting lives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. How cool is that!? Nice and gritty. I like it. Interestingly, though, the original painting, done in oil, oil stick and graphite pencil on linen, measuring 43 3/8 by 33 1/8 inches is not currently on display and looks shockingly different from the lithographs. While my little fake litho and the real deals depicted the girl in a red dress, an orange background shining through the window with an upside down blue parrot, the original piece was somewhat more subdued. The girl's hair and table were still dark brown but there was no color to the dress, the light outside was a pale pink and the parrot was green. How can that be? Well, according to AI/Wiki/God knows what, Barnet "frequently created both original oil paintings and limited edition lithographs/prints of the same subject, often years apart." His original painting was from 1967 and he created signed lithographs of "Summer" in 1969 and 1974 but changed up the color scheme. The most recognized version is the more brightly colored, signed print which I was originally drawn in by. I'll never give up on finding a real signed edition of Will Barnet's "Silent Seasons – Summer." For some reason it really speaks to me. The graphic art, the era and its whimsical 1970s nature.