re-blogged from MAVERICK'S DAUGHTER
James Richmond Barthé (January 28, 1901 – March 5, 1989) was an African American sculptor known for his many public works, including the Toussaint L’Ouverture Monument in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and a sculpture of Rose McClendon for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House.
Barthe once said that “all my life I have be interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man.”
In 1946 Barthé became a member of the National Sculpture Society.
Eventually, the tense environment and violence of the city began to take its toll, and he decided to abandon his life of fame and move to Jamaica in the West Indies in 1947. His career flourished in Jamaica and he remained there until the mid-1960s when ever-growing violence forced him to yet again move. For the next five years he lived in Switzerland, Spain, and Italy before eventually settling in Pasadena, California. When he moved to a rental apartment, above a garage in Pasadena, the city named the street after him.
In that apartment, Barthe worked on his memoirs and most importantly, editioned many of his works with the financial assistance of the actor James Garner until his death in 1989.
A bust, done by Richmond Barthe, of actor James Garner is on display. Mr. Garner was a devoted benefactor to this talented African American artist for many years until his death.
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