13 Facts About Cornelia Barns

Cornelia Baxter Barns was an American illustrator, political cartoonist, painter, feminist, and socialist.

Charles Cornelia Barns initially entered law school, but then explored the sciences before launching a career as a newspaperman for the New York Herald.

Cornelia Barns enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1906, where she became a pupil of William Merritt Chase and John Twachtman.

Cornelia Barns has been mentioned as an associate of Robert Henri and his Ashcan school.

Cornelia Barns's work was honored by receiving two Cresson Traveling Scholarships from the academy, which permitted her first trip to Europe in 1910, and encouraged another trip abroad in 1913.

Cornelia Barns exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and by 1910 was listed as a painter in the American Art Annual.

From 1913 to 1917 Cornelia Barns was a frequent contributor to The Masses, a socialist magazine that attracted a highly talented group of writers and artists.

Cornelia Barns's cover, "Waiting," published in The Suffragist in 1919 is a powerful portrayal of an unending mass of strong-bodied women, two with babies in their arms, holding a lighted torch while waiting for political recognition through suffrage.

In 1920 Cornelia Barns moved to California with her husband, Arthur Selwyn Garbett, and their young son.

Cornelia Barns served as music critic for a San Francisco newspaper.

Cornelia Barns turned mostly to illustration, and provided sketches and covers for Sunset magazine by 1921.

Cornelia Barns contributed a feature column for Oakland Tribune, "My City Oakland".

Garbett and Barns retired to Los Gatos, California, shortly before Cornelia's death from tuberculosis in November 1941.