The Orton’s Pasture, Plainfield, Vermont, 1941

The Orton Farm was a dairy farm in Plainfield, Vermont. Herbert Barnett spent his summers in Plainfield and painted the Orton pasture many times.

Barnett came out of the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, but he established himself as an artist early in his career. Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, he took night art classes at the famed Rhode Island School of Design while he was still in high school. He studied painting during his summer vacations in Rockport, Massachusetts, with Aldro Hibbard of the Cape Ann School of painters. (Hibbard’s works are also in The Orton Collection.) Barnett’s first one-man show was at a gallery in Boston – he was 18 years old at the time. On a three-year fellowship in the early 1930s, he traveled and studied art in Europe.

In 1940, he was the director of the Worcester Art Museum and summered in Vermont. A decade or so later, he became the dean of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, the school of the Cincinnati Art Museum, a position he held until his death. Many American museums and institutions have collected Barnett’s work.