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Hi everybody, welcome to Barton's Takeout. I'm Robin Quarren, the Collections Research Coordinator at the Bartons Foundation. Today I'm going to talk to you about this small watercolor here by a Pennsylvania German artist on the south wall of Room 15. So this watercolor was made by Johann Adam Iron. He was a native to Bucks County and born in 1755, but he came from German immigrants, or his parents were German immigrants rather. He primarily worked as a teacher and or schoolmaster in various schools in the area throughout his life. He was a very prolific artist of a type of artwork known as Fracture Art, which this is an example of, and I'll touch a little bit on that after I talk a bit about schools. So schools at this time, it was prior to the passage of the Free Public School Act in 1834. Children were often educated, not in public schools, but in schools affiliated with church membership. So teacher or sorry, parents were actually enrolling their students, choosing to enroll their students in these schools. And they taught classes in writing, reading, grammar, arithmetic, and of course, religious instruction since they were religious schools. In the areas where Pennsylvania Germans lived, they classes were often taught in German, which is why we see this writing down here is actually in German, not in English. The teachers would give children for Schriften, which is a German word, which basically means writing example. And that was to help them learn to write. And so the models that they would give to them for writing examples for writing exercises would often incorporate drawn or painted motifs like this, and the school teachers were actually the ones making them. They were particularly popular with Mennonites and Schwenkfelders. And the interiors of them were usually consisted of biblical hymns and verses. This watercolor was made in 1784, as you see at the bottom. So it's quite an old piece. And it's actually a cover for a writing example that was made by Iyer, the artist for one of his students. There are a few things about this piece, which are very common with his work, and I'll point them out. These quills right here, right over here, held by hand. And then on the other side, the quills resting in an ink pot. This heart-shaped design, although could be found with other artists, he often used that. And then these two birds right here, facing each other, this pair of birds. Those are common motifs that he used in his work. But this kind of art could also have angels blowing trumpets or men in colonial dress, but they were often very richly decorated with vibrant colors of reds and blues and greens. As you see here, red is really the dominant color. We also see some of these strange looking flowers right here, and then tulips. And then this kind of like IV-like stems right here. And these two eagles right here as well. So some of these motifs could also be seen on other types of Pennsylvania German art. It was very common with them to repeat a lot of the same motifs and themes. So tulips are very popular as our hearts and birds. You may also see a lot of these tulips and some of these other designs on some other Pennsylvania German art in the collection at the Barnes. If you take a look at some of the blanket chests the next time you're here, stuff a little bit closer to the ground, you'll definitely notice some that have hearts on them, and definitely some with tulips. It's a very, very popular, very popular motif. So it's an interesting, you can see the similarities, the way that they were using these same motifs, but also that Fracture artists may have been decorating some of those blanket chests as well. So let's look at this inscription down here so you can see, so you can see a little bit more about who this person may have been. So it's in German like I said, but I'll read it to you in English. This little book of writing models belongs to Elizabeta Leitermann, people of writing in the Deep Run School, written out for her the 16th of December on Odomini 1784. So she went to the Deep Run School which was in Bucks County, and that was a Mennonite School, and that was one of the schools with that Johann Adam Eyre taught at. So we know it's from 1784. We don't know how old she was, but we, what we can infer about something like this is that they probably would, she probably would have held on to it for quite a while, because it had a very important function, and that was to teach her how to write. So these these really functional objects were decorated with these really beautiful decorations, and you see that also in furniture. These pieces were very functional, the blanket chests where people could sit on them, they were meant to be, they were things to be stored in them to be furniture, but they also had, they were also were beautiful in showing these same kinds of the same kind of decoration as you see here. So images like this can also be seen throughout the collection. We have some other examples of Fracture art as well. Fracture can also be seen in things like baptismal certificates or birth certificates, or something that does never writing on it. You can also see beautifully decorated watercolors. So I hope the next time that you come to the barn, which I hope will be soon, you can take a little bit of a closer look at something like this and look for others in the collection and look for more of these different motifs, these designs right here in other artwork in the collection. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed listening, and I hope you subscribe to our channel to hear more of these. And if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. I'm Tom Collins, New Bauer Family Executive Director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.


This is our first annual event doing this. We're a community arts organization and we've got that beautiful Hatfield McCoy Park over there in McCarr and we want to utilize it more. We want to be able to provide programming for the community, allow them to come out, have something to do, spend their weekends with us at a low cost-effective rate and that's why we've kept our rates low.