Laura Barnes and the Arboretum School
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Albert C. Barnes and Laura L. Barnes walking in a garden, c. 1935. Unidentified photographer. Photographic postcard. Photograph Collection, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia
About Research Notes
Did you know that we are always trying to learn more about our art collection? The Barnes has a team of curators, scholars, conservators, and archivists who actively research the treasured works on view in our galleries. We work continually to link collection objects to their original histories, and almost every day we uncover something new—from small details like when a piece entered the collection, to larger discoveries like unknown sketches on the backs of two Cézannes!
We also study our own history as an institution. The Barnes archives, with material dating back to 1902, is a wealth of information about works in the collection—and about the ideas and people that formed it.
Research Notes presents some of our most recent discoveries and interpretations. Read the newest entry below, and keep scrolling for past notes.
Laura Barnes and the Arboretum School
by Diane Newbury
Dr. Albert Barnes is known for his world-class art collection. But did you know his wife, Laura Leggett Barnes (1875–1966), had a passion for plants and horticulture that rivaled his love of art? Like Dr. Barnes, Mrs. Barnes pursued her interests intensely and shaped her work and life around them. Her plant collection became the basis for the Barnes Foundation’s arboretum school and horticulture curriculum, and her teaching opened students’ eyes to the living world around them and inspired them to think more deeply about nature. She fostered relationships with plant experts across the country and, in the tradition of John Bartram, Thomas Meehan, and John and Lydia Morris, helped solidify the Philadelphia region as a horticultural epicenter.
From Brooklyn to Philadelphia
Born in Brooklyn in 1875, Laura Leggett was raised in comfortable circumstances. Her father, Richard Lee Leggett, ran a wholesale grocery business, and she grew up in a brownstone on Adelphi Street, near downtown Brooklyn.¹ She came of age in an era of growing interest in gardens, horticulture, and planned public space. In response to increased industrialization and urbanism, reform-minded advocates supported the development of public parks and promoted good health and well-being through outdoor activities. Both Prospect Park and Fort Greene Park, close to her neighborhood, were developed by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux in the years before her birth (1867–73 and 1867, respectively).
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Bride's Book. Laura Leggett Barnes, c. 1901. Unidentified photographer. Laura Leggett Barnes Papers, Barnes Foundation Archives
Laura Leggett met Albert Barnes in August 1900, and the couple married in June 1901. Following an extended wedding trip to Europe, they settled in Overbrook, Pennsylvania, while a house in nearby Merion was built. Mrs. Barnes supervised the construction, furnishing, and landscaping of their new house, nicknamed Lauraston.² In the early 20th century, a woman of her status was expected to make a home for her husband, which would include a garden. Books and magazines catering to the needs of suburban homeowners were plentiful, wherein writers disseminated information about garden styles and designs, plants, and practical horticulture. Women were encouraged to get involved with horticulture.
Laura Barnes’s personal library contained some of the most influential gardening and horticulture books from the first part of the 20th century, indicating her burgeoning interest. She owned books on native trees, wildflowers, and ferns by Frances Theodora Parsons, Neltje Blanchan, and George Aiken—important naturalists of the period. She also owned many titles about the practical aspects of making a garden, such as Grace Tabor’s Making a Bulb Gardenand Making the Grounds Attractive with Shrubbery, part of the House and Garden Making series. Series like these, authored by respected garden writers and landscape professionals, covered myriad topics of interest to the suburban homeowner.
Developing the Arboretum
The next move Dr. and Mrs. Barnes made was just down the street from Lauraston. In 1922, they purchased a 12-acre property on Lapsley Lane that would become home to Dr. Barnes’s growing art collection and his foundation for arts education. The property had an impressive collection of more than 250 trees amassed by the previous owner, Joseph Lapsley Wilson (1844–1928), who stipulated that they must remain untouched after the sale. His collection contained some large and unusual trees—at least eight species of magnolia and numerous oaks, as well as many Japanese specimens, such as the Cryptomeria and the Cercidiphyllum. Wilson’s conifer collection included a Nordmann fir from the mountains around the Black Sea, Retinosporas (now Chamaecyparis), and Cedrus libani. He also had a rare specimen of Franklinia (then called Gordonia alatamaha). With the purchase of the arboretum, Mrs. Barnes had an opportunity to dive deeper into the field of horticulture. She began building relationships with experts in horticulture and botany.
Mrs. Barnes contacted the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, headed by the renowned plantsman Charles Sprague Sargent (1851–1927). Sargent, the first director of the Arnold, was a towering figure in American horticulture. He authored many books, advocated for the preservation of American forests, and supported plant collecting expeditions. In a letter, Mrs. Barnes writes that she has been reading the arboretum's bulletins "and would be glad to exchange specimens of plants.”³ She describes the Wilson tree collection and plans for the educational use of the grounds by the foundation. Sargent’s enthusiastic reply includes the promise of seeds and an invitation to visit the Arnold Arboretum.⁴ She also began a relationship with the British plant collector and explorer E. H. Wilson (1876–1930), who collected specimens throughout Asia for the Arnold. Arboreta supported plant collecting expeditions to learn more about plant diversity, distribution, and use throughout the world. Plants are valued as food, as medicine, and in aesthetic ways. By collecting plants from different regions, scientists learn more about the natural world. E. H. Wilson appears to have visited the Barnes Arboretum in 1926 and sent many plants to Mrs. Barnes.⁵ Throughout her life, she maintained a relationship with the Arnold, corresponding and trading seeds and plants.
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Laura L. Barnes aboard the steamship Europa, 1933. Unidentified photographer. Gelatin silver print. Photograph Collection, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia
In the 1920s and 1930s, Laura Barnes focused on developing the land around the newly built Barnes Foundation building. Her exhaustive search for new plants found her writing to specialty nurseries and arboreta across the country to track down hard-to-find specimens. She purchased from more than 70 nurseries and built collections of lilacs, roses, and both herbaceous and tree peonies. Her gardens contained perennials and rock garden plants. The woodland area contained an extensive collection of ferns. She also focused on woody plant specimens. She was laying the groundwork for a place to study all areas of horticulture. She was constantly reading and adding to her horticulture book library and also took classes and attended lectures in the 1930s to increase her knowledge.⁶ Through the University of Pennsylvania’s College Collateral Courses, Mrs. Barnes took classes encompassing all areas of landscape study.⁷
By the end of the 1930s, Mrs. Barnes had developed a reputation in Philadelphia’s horticulture circles for her knowledge and the arboretum’s growing collection. An announcement for a lecture on ferns she delivered in 1939 at Morris Arboretum stated she was known for having “given special attention at the Barnes Foundation to the cultivation of a very large number of hardy ferns, one of the attractive and novel features of this very beautiful and interesting institution.”⁸ The announcement also said that the Barnes Arboretum’s collection had grown to include “1,250 species of woodies, rare and unusual trees, 250 lilacs, 245 roses, Cotoneasters, Barberries, broad leaf evergreens” and 88 species and varieties of fern.⁹
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Albert C. Barnes, Laura L. Barnes, and Fidèle at Ker-Feal, 1942. Photograph by Gottscho-Schleisner. Placed in the public domain by the heirs of the photographers. Gelatin silver print. Photograph Collection, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia
Founding the Arboretum School
Although using the arboretum for formal education was on the minds of both Dr. and Mrs. Barnes from the start,¹⁰ it was not until 1940 that Mrs. Barnes decided it was time to follow through on the idea. As a trustee of the foundation and director of the arboretum, she wrote an official letter to her husband and the Barnes board stating, “The time is ripe for the installation of a systematic course of instruction for students in our Arboretum.” She clearly had a plan, when she continued, “We need a building for the lectures and the classes, and we [ask to use] 57 Lapsley Lane.”¹¹ This was the house Dr. Barnes had built for Joseph Lapsley Wilson and his wife after purchasing their property. Wilson had stayed involved with the land after its sale and served as the first director of the arboretum. He and Mrs. Barnes made plant purchases and developed the arboretum together until his death in 1928. The trustees allowed the former Wilson residence to become the schoolhouse for the horticulture program, which it remained for decades.
But before writing to Dr. Barnes and the foundation, Laura Barnes had reached out to University of Pennsylvania professor John Fogg (1898–1982) for advice and help in planning the curriculum. Fogg had received his PhD in botany from Harvard and began teaching at Penn in 1925, becoming a full professor in 1944. He was instrumental in identifying and cataloging the plants at Morris Arboretum when the property was gifted to Penn following the death of founder Lydia Morris in the 1930s. He enjoyed a long career and was deeply involved with many horticulture organizations and plant societies. Because of these relationships, he was the perfect person to assist Mrs. Barnes in her goal to develop a school. It appears that they were well matched in terms of energy and focus.
Laura Barnes invited Fogg and his wife, Helen, to discuss her plans. According to Helen Fogg’s recollection, the rainy weather was not conducive to a long stroll in the Barnes Arboretum. They met in the property’s tea house instead. After a conversation about the arboretum’s plants, Mrs. Barnes got down to business. According to Dr. Fogg, Mrs. Barnes felt the Philadelphia area needed adult education in horticulture, botany, and landscape architecture. She planned to teach horticulture and wanted him to teach botany. She believed he had the proper contacts to help secure more high-caliber teachers for her school.¹²
The meeting was a success. Afterward, Fogg wrote to Mrs. Banes to express his thoughts on the school’s mission: “The more I think the matter over, the more it seems to me that we can serve the highest purpose by catering not to the well-to-do leisured garden club group, but by helping to educate the serious minded working persons who are interested in horticulture and allied subjects as an avocation, but some of whom were educational facilities provided, would like to follow it as a profession.” He also outlined course topics, provided contacts to advertise the school, and suggested holding some evening classes.¹³
It is not clear what happened to the idea of not catering to “the well-to-do garden club group” because the school, which opened in October 1940, enrolled many wealthy women over the following decades. The outbreak of World War II may have played a role in shaping the student body. However, anyone taking Barnes Arboretum classes had to be serious about the program. There were strict rules about attendance and tardiness. To ignore these rules was to risk being asked to leave the school. As Mrs. Barnes wrote to a potential student: “The Arboretum has only two requirements, regular and prompt attendance. Although two absences other than those caused by illness are allowed.”¹⁴ Students had to walk fast and not dawdle to keep up with Mrs. Barnes when outside looking at plants.
Later, in a 1957 statement to the American Association of Botanical Gardens, Mrs. Barnes summed up her program: “I disagree most strongly in the idea of making the instruction ‘popular’ or, in other words, ‘talking down’ to people. No knowledge in any science can be acquired in ‘three or four’ lectures a year. . . . A ‘hobby’ may be formed, but that is not knowledge. We are in our eighteenth year of instruction at the arboretum, and in all these years our professors . . . have never given ‘popular’ lectures. . . . We have so many applicants our rooms will not accommodate them.”¹⁵
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Laura L. Barnes in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, 1956. Unidentified photographer. Gelatin silver print. Photograph Collection, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia
Laura Barnes and John Fogg’s mutual respect became a warm friendship. His recollections of her illustrate genuine admiration. Through him, we can get a sense of Laura Barnes’s personality. Fogg commented on her “marvelous sense of humor.” He described her as a “tiny person” having “pleasant features, and a wonderful smile, wonderful piercing blue eyes, and just a magnetic personality.” He also noted that she could “hold her own” with the outspoken Dr. Barnes and that “he wasn’t going to push her around.”¹⁶ Fogg and his wife were devoted to Mrs. Barnes and were often guests at either Merion or Ker-Feal, the farmhouse in Chester County owned by the Barneses. Many letters between Fogg and Mrs. Barnes describe lovely lunches and conversation.¹⁷
Her students were similarly devoted. In letters to Mrs. Barnes, students often expressed their appreciation for her and the rigorous education they received at the arboretum school. One student wrote: “My eyes see things they never saw before and my life is much enriched. Your enthusiasm and vitality have been an inspiration to me.”¹⁸ For another student, even poison ivy could not ruin a day spent with Mrs. Barnes: “I have a little Poison ivy as a souvenir! Every time it itches it reminds me of that wonderful day, so I really quite enjoy it.”¹⁹
Mrs. Barnes also shared her time and knowledge with arboretum guests. Her correspondence file overflows with effusive thank-you notes. One visitor wrote: “I came away filled with inspiration and ideas. . . . I am sure I will dream about your woodland garden with its enchanted cottage.”²⁰ Another visitor, commenting on her command of horticulture, wrote, “I found you to be a walking book of knowledge.”²¹ Time spent in the arboretum with Laura Barnes provided inspiration to visitors, and, most likely, a desire to improve their own gardens.
While Dr. Barnes was busy following his passion, Laura Barnes was equally engaged with hers. And like her husband, she was ahead of her time. She championed ideas that still drive contemporary discussions about horticulture and gardens. She encouraged the use of unusual plants and lamented the use of only the easiest to propagate plants. Her plant choices exhibited multi-season interest with good bloom, interesting bark, and fall color. She researched and tested wildflowers to find those best suited to the region. She questioned pesticide use in pest management. Through her deep engagement and generosity with her time and knowledge, she developed relationships with horticulturists all over the country. The school she developed truly cultivated curiosity in her students. Her legacy is her arboretum, her school, and the [thousands] of students who completed classes. It was her “chief interest in life.”²²
Past Research Notes
June 2024
Combining early European tapestries and modern frames, these chairs have been a longstanding mystery at the Barnes. New research suggests an intriguing background.
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March 2024
A close look at a small group of religious objects in Room 16 of the collection.
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October 2023
Rancor, Returned Letters & Reconciliation: Dr. Albert C. Barnes and Leo Stein’s Correspondence
The story of Barnes and Stein’s friendship, quarrel, and reconciliation.
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August 2023
“I Would Like to Paint Happiness”: Henri-Edmond Cross, Two Women by the Shore, Mediterranean
Examine the connection between philosophy, science, and nature in Cross’s work.
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June 2023
See how this carved bust was originally part of a much larger ancient Greek funerary marker.
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March 2023
Learn how this still life, recently attributed to 18th-century French painter Philippe Parpette, relates to medieval symbolism and the long tradition of botanical illustration.
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December 2022
Painted in 1940 at the height of Pippin’s relationship with Albert Barnes, Supper Time marks a transitional moment in the artist's career.
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July 2022
Hidden Gems: Tiny Bronze Horses and Bulls from Ancient Greece
Small but mighty, these animal figurines are some of the oldest objects in the Barnes collection. What makes them special, and how did these ancient Greek objects find their way into the Barnes collection?
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May 2022
The Life and Death of Tantwenemherti: Reconstructing an Egyptian Priestess’s Coffin
Removing this coffin fragment from its frame led to new discoveries about the object and the woman for whom it was made.
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March 2022
A fascinating architectural investigation helps us discover the original location of two pieces of French metalwork.
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December 2021
Nearly any collection of Egyptian objects could have a fake ancient artifact hidden in its midst. Forgeries are intended to deceive—to pass as authentic works by specific artists or belonging to specific cultural traditions. Forgeries of Egyptian objects are common, with a long history that continues even today.
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July 2021
New research helps identify previously unknown sites in Gritchenko's paintings.
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May 2021
From Thebes to Philadelphia: Tracing the Provenance of an Egyptian Relief
See how a chance discovery allowed us to trace a Barnes relief back to its original context in an Egyptian temple and to uncover more details of the object’s history.
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December 2020
Alexandros marked a stylistic departure for painter Giorgio de Chirico, who was largely known for his metaphysical works. Is there more beneath the surface of this seemingly straightforward scene?
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Giorgio de Chirico. Alexandros, 1935. BF960. © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome
September 2020
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Egyptomania swept the nation—and had a major effect on Dr. Barnes’s collection.
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Egyptian. Relief from the Tomb of Khay, 1279–1213 BCE. A107. Public Domain.
May 2020
Thanks to newspaper accounts, materials in our archives, and her own writings, Violette de Mazia’s impact and legacy are clear. But who was Violette before the Barnes?
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Unidentified photographer. Violette de Mazia, Angelo Pinto, and others under Seated Riffian (detail). c. 1930s. Violette de Mazia Collection. Barnes Foundation Archives
March 2020
A close look at this enigmatic painting by the prolific Italian artist reveals both a pastiche of childhood memories and his philosophy of metaphysics.
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January 2020
Though sometimes overlooked, the glass objects within the Pennsylvania German cupboard in Room 19 are examples of one of America’s earliest craft forms
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November 2019
Probably used for beer or cider, the tankard bears the emblem of the bakers’ guild and the inscription: “May God in Heaven bless the field / Bake big bread so that we may make a little money.”
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September 2019
If Miró's imagery seems to emerge from the realm of the unconscious, it is at the same time very connected to real-world events.
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July 2019
A newspaper critic noted that “whoever enjoys a whimsical imagination will revel in Mr. Demuth’s illustrations of Zola’s Nana... The man who obtains this group of illustrations will be a lucky man.” In March 1922, Dr. Barnes was that lucky man.
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May 2019
The sheer number of clocks collected by Dr. Barnes suggests he had an interest beyond timekeeping.
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March 2019
The Carnegie Museum wanted to know: Did this painting once belong to the Earl of Northbrook's collection of Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and French old masters?
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January 2019
How did art historians piece together the mystery behind this panel? A quasi-forensic search spanning decades was involved.
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October 2018
The painting, which depicts a group of horses in a mysterious architectural landscape, is most likely related to images of the Christian apocalypse, which de Chirico may have seen as connected to the rise of fascism after World War I.
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