Barns, Cornelia Baxter (1888–1941)

American magazine illustrator and political activist. Name variations: Cornelia Barns Garbett. Born Cornelia Baxter Barns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1888; died in 1941; daughter of Charles Barns (an impresario); studied art at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; married Arthur Selwyn Garbett (a music critic); children: son, Charles (b. 1915).

Began contributing drawings to radical magazine The Masses (1914); moved to California (1917); continued to draw and also worked as a journalist; one of the few women illustrators to appear in the Socialist press.

Born in Philadelphia in 1888, Cornelia Baxter Barns was the daughter of theatrical impresario Charles Barns and grew up in a lively, artistically stimulating environment. She studied art at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and was twice awarded the school's traveling scholarship. After graduation, she began working as an illustrator. Drawn to the more exciting artistic milieu of New York City, she arrived there around 1911.

Barns married the music critic Arthur Selwyn Garbett and gave birth to a son Charles in 1915. Once in New York, she quickly became active in avant-garde art and politics, serving as director of the Art Worker's Club for Women. By 1914, she was contributing illustrations to The Masses, the leading Socialist magazine in the United States. In 1915, several of Barns' works were exhibited at the Salon of American Humorists, an exhibition held at the Folsom Gallery. Though her health was delicate, Barns was an active member of the Socialist Party.

Barns was one of the few women to play a significant role in The Masses, a fact indicative of the overwhelmingly male-dominated leadership in Socialist politics in the United States, a leadership which often played down or virtually ignored the feminist agenda of the day. Virtually all of the articles on women's issues appearing in The Masses were written by men. Her cartoons, which appeared in the publication until its suppression by the government in 1917, avoided portentous statements of universal social analysis, depicting instead average working people living their normal, often difficult, lives. Barns often wielded a gentle and witty pen; in her March 1914 cartoon of an anti-suffrage meeting of males, "United We Stand!," there is considerable wit but little bitterness in her depiction of several foolish men still unwilling to grant women the right to vote.

Stricken with tuberculosis, in 1917 Barns moved with her family to California to find a healthier climate. Committed to radical ideals of political and social change, she continued to contribute to such journals as Liberator, New Masses, Suffragist, and Woman Voter. In 1921, she served briefly as both associate editor and art director of Birth Control Review. Determined to remain in touch with the radical New York scene, she maintained a lively correspondence with old friends and was visited by a number of them, including Max Eastman and Mike Gold. For many years, Barns published a daily editorial vignette, "My City Oakland," which appeared in the Oakland Post Enquirer. She died in 1941.

sources:

Barns, Cornelia. "Twelve-Thirty" [cartoon], in The Masses. Vol. 6. January 1915, p. 15.

Churchill, Allen. The Improper Bohemians: A Recreation of Greenwich Village in its Heyday. NY: E.P. Dutton, 1959.

City Life Illustrated, 1890–1940. Exhibition catalogue, Delaware Art Museum, 1980.

Mason, Tim. "Cornelia Barns Garbett." California Art Research, Carmel, unpublished research report.

Zurier, Rebecca. Art for the Masses: A Radical Magazine and Its Graphics, 1911–1917. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988.

John Haag , Associate Professor, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia