Will Barnet (b. 1911)

Will Barnet, the son of a machinist at the United Shoe, discovered the Beverly Public Library's collection of art books when still in grammar school. Encouraged by the library staff, he proceeded to devour every book in the collection as well as many others in museums in Salem and Boston.

Barnet also began to draw and paint. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and then continued his studies at the Art Students League in New York. He eventually settled in New York and in the mid-1930s was hired by the League as its official printmaker and teacher of painting. Barnet would later go on to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Yale University, Cornell, the University of Wisconsin, and other schools around the country.

Between the 1930s and 1980s the theme of the artist's own work evolved from social realism, to the family (he frequently used his first wife and three sons as models), to abstraction, and finally back to figurative work and the family. His second wife, Elena, figures in many of Barnet's later works, including his popular "Women and the Sea" series of prints.

In the early 1940s a grateful Will Barnet thanked his home town and the staff of the Beverly Public Library by donating twelve prints and funds to build a room in which display them. Since then the artist has periodically added to the library's collection of "Barnets."

While Will Barnet may be Beverly’s most famous artist, others found inspiration here. In recent years, a painting of West Beach in Beverly Farms, by the great Gloucester luminist painter Fitz Henry (Hugh) Lane sold at a Boston auction for $3.5 million. In 1997, that figure was the highest price ever paid for a single item at any auction outside New York City.