years then gave up that work and struck out as a painter. His art soon became highly respected. In 1985, he was commissioned by the National Geographic Society to create an original oil painting titled “The Vanishing Fleet” as a gift to President Ronald Reagan and Barber participated in the White House presentation of the painting. The painting includes several boats; the central image is of the skipjack Stanley Norman. This study for the larger painting that was published as a limited edition print now hangs in the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. In 1987 Barber was elected to the Board of Trustees of the


Chesapeake Bay Foundation. During the Clinton administration, he was chosen to do a painting of the White House in com- memoration of the bicentennial of the President’s home in 2000. Former first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, displayed his version of Virginia’s Easter Egg created for the 1995 Annual White House Easter Egg Hunt. Kathy and John opened The Barber Gallery in Richmond,


Virginia during 1994, and in 1996 the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum published an incredible beautifully book titled: John M. Barber’s Chesapeake with a narrative by John R. Valliant who is the past Executive Director and President of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. In the preface to the book they created together, John R. Valliant wrote of Barber: “I first became acquainted with John in 1989 when he visited St. Michaels to create “Moonlight over St. Michaels.” At that point, I realized that in addition to all of her natural assets, I was seeing yet another of the Chesapeake Bay’s treasures- an artist whose work captures the spirit of the Bay, her waters and her shoreline, her watermen, and the craft in which they make a living... One


President Ronald Reagan, Gilbert M. Grosvenor–President of the National Geographic Society, John M. Barber and Dennis B. Kane- Vice President of Television for National Geographic in 1985.


of John’s first artistic objectives was to capture on canvas the dwindling fleet of skipjacks, the last working commercial sail to fish in North America. In doing this, he became a trusted friend of many skipjack captains and their crews, not an easy achievement in a society of watermen who cling to a simple way of life that is tough, but above all, honorable. Their mistrust of outsiders is ex- acerbated by the disappointment of exploitation and commercial- ization. To gain their confidence, John has risen before dawn on


The House & Home Magazine


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