VAM galleries including this work:
The Owensboro Museum of Fine Art | World of the Spirit || VAM Home

Saint Matthew was one of the 12 apostles and is considered the patron saint of bankers. This massive sculpture of Matthew stands more than six feet tall, and children who visit the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art enjoy guessing its shoe size. The sculptor, David Barten, creates plaster or clay head studies and full-length models of his subjects before carving the sculpture in basswood and/or pine. Some of the models are quarter- or half-scale. When finished, he often applies a transparent wash of paint to his wooden works of art.

About the Artist

David Barten became interested in sculpting wood as a student at Taber Academy in Marion, Massachusetts. While studying at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, he was introduced to sculpture by German artist Ernst Barlach (1870-1938) and to American folk art objects, both of which have influenced his carving style. Barten has a strong interest in American history and has received several commissions for carvings of religious and historical figures.

In the late 1990s, Barten began making small dioramas or wood constructions on a regular basis rather than focusing exclusively on making large carvings. These smaller, polychromed sculptures require about a year each to produce and draw on the natural environment of New England for subject matter.

Barten has been represented in many exhibitions, including Kentucky shows at the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, and Centre College in Danville.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Consider the following vocabulary words when discussing this work: three-dimensional, sculpture, media, and perspective.

Has the artist provided any visual clues to help you determine who this sculpture represents? What does Barten suggest about the personality of Saint Matthew? Compare and contrast this three-dimensional historic portrait with the two-dimensional historic portrait of Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daveiss by Charles Willson Peale. Do you think one is more successful than the other?

Barten was influenced by folk art carvings. Compare this work to some other wooden folk art figures, such as Helen La France Orr’s Pineknot Family (in the Kentucky Library and Museum gallery) or the works of LaVon Williams shown in the Visual Arts Toolkit video segment “Wood Sculpture: LaVon Williams” (on the Through Artists’ Eyes video/DVD).

Links

See the Ernst Barlach entry in the online Artcyclopedia for information on the Expressionist sculptor who was a major influence on David Barten’s work.
[www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/barlach_ernst.html]