Merion, Pennsylvania
- 181 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
- 69 by Paul Cézanne,
- 59 by Henri Matisse,
- 46 by Pablo Picasso,
- 21 by Chaim Soutine,
- 18 by Henri Rousseau,
- 16 by Amedeo Modigliani,
- 11 by Edgar Degas,
- 7 by Vincent Van Gogh,
- 6 by Georges Seurat,
- as well as numerous other masters, including Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Gauguin, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet, Jean Hugo, Claude Monet
- The son of a poverty-stricken Civil War veteran, he grew up in the verminous, squatter slums of Philadelphia, with a burning determination to get rich.
- Argyrol was an instant and worldwide success, and Barnes was a millionaire before he was 35. In 1928, with superb timing, Barnes sold out Argyrol for an estimated $4,000,000, not long before the discovery of antibiotics, which largely replaced it.
- Guided by his lifelong friend, Artist William Glackens, Barnes began to buy up French impressionist paintings by the boatload.
- Although many of his early purchases were mistakes, he showed taste and a fine instinct for good investment. He was one of the discoverers of Modigliani. In one moment of sound judgment he bought 60 Soutines for $50 apiece—long before Soutine was well known.
- In time Barnes assembled the world's greatest collection of Matisses, the largest group of Cezannes outside the Louvre, and over $50 million worth of art by Picasso, Braque, Gauguin, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ben Shahn.
- When his collection outgrew his home and factory, Barnes built a marble temple to house it in suburban Merion, surrounded the place with ferocious police dogs and a ten-foot "spite wall."