ERNIE BARNES (1938-2009)The Gospel Truth 1985 signedacrylic on canvas 91.4 by 121.9 cm. 36 by 48 in.This work was executed in 1985. Footnotes:We wish to thank the Ernie Barnes Family Trust for their kind assistance in cataloguing this lot.ProvenanceCollection of Tim Hauser, California (acquired directly from the artist in 1985)Thence by descent to the present ownerExhibitedRiverside, Riverside Art Museum, Visual Voice, 2016Ernie Barnes' legacy has crystallized as one of the most significant and upstanding careers of a late great American artist. A young, aspiring boy from segregated Durham, North Carolina, who took to the football pitch as a professional player in the NFL before his first solo show in New York in 1966, Barnes' artistic inclinations were a constant throughout his life that he wove seamlessly together with his love of sport, music, and the sense of community and shared experience that underpinned his creative passion. The gospel halls of Barnes have become some of the most iconic and highly sought-after paintings by the artist, and The Gospel Truth is arguably the finest example of which to come to market. Displaying a remarkable attention to detail and almost chiaroscuro sense of space and light – whose hallowed windows descend in golden sunbeams dappled across the congregation – one cannot shake the imagistic power of a canvas that is bursting with a rapturous joy, marking the height of Barnes' career but a year after he was the official artist of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Across the glorious intensity of The Gospel Truth, Barnes revels in a kind of ecstasy that is both unique to his painting and to the American south that he was raised in. His subjects cast their arms aloft, heads raised to the sky, some held between hands, others throw their bodies and twist their faces in uncontrollable adulation. Recalling his childhood trepidation at the volume and fervour of a congregation in the throes of gospel verse, Barnes glimpsed something that remained at the heart of his career throughout his life; a sense of human presence and power that is found in the individual and in the collective consciousness. In the aptly titled The Gospel Truth this essential quality comes to the fore with remarkable force and artistry. In the finest examples by the artist, the light, depth of field and figurative dynamism identifies masterworks from great paintings – this is such a piece. From the halos that cascade amongst the pulsating crowd to the vignette of the lower edges that frames our gaze, the unique hazy glow of Barnes' paintings makes them radiate an inner light, projecting from the wall with a swirling, intensely layered surface that glistens as it catches the hips and shoulders of the dancing congregation. The Gospel Truth boasts a palette that is immaculately refined and delicately shifts between sunbeam and shadow. Like Barnes' night-time dance venues and pool halls that capture after-hours socialising and amusement, the Sunday morning of The Gospel Truth reveals another kind of liberation, one of worship, community and song, that nevertheless spills over into a party of stupendous energy. Purchased from the artist by Tim Hauser, eight-time Grammy winner and founder of The Manhattan Transfer, the present work bespeaks a musical passion shared between two masters of their craft. Introduced by the bassist Kenny Gradney of Little Feat., who also came up with the name 'The Gospel Truth', the painting was acquired fresh off Barnes' easel by Hauser and would be a brightening focal point of his collection amongst friends. It comes to market now as one of the most remarkable gospel canvases to have remained in constant ownership since its making, full of unique details and qualities that make it one of the most inspired paintings by the artist. Barnes' life and career has become refocused since his retrospective at the California African American Museum in summer 2019. If the truly American Renaissance man existed, it was him. He was unquestionably a natural artist, demonstrating a childhood fascination with the language of painting, intrigued by Delacroix, Michelangelo, and Toulouse-Lautrec. He was rarely without his sketchbook that accompanied him to classroom and track and field alike. Barnes' early sporting ability was an enabler for his artistic pursuit. He earned a full scholarship to the North Carolina College at Durham where he majored in art, and in turn was drafted to the Baltimore Colts in 1959, going on to play for the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos, before calling time on his professional career in 1965.Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to consider his term in the NFL a segue from his painting. From his early interests, Barnes' athleticism influenced his artistic inclinations in the most beautiful of ways and placed him at the epicentre of an Americana that made him a bona fide voice of a generation. From his high school captaincy of the football team to the biggest teams in the NFL, his appreciation of the body – of form, of strength, of stamina, of limits – was ingrained. Commenting on his relationship to sport and its impact on his practice, Barnes commented that 'being an athlete helped me to formulate an analysis of movement, and movement is what I wanted to capture on canvas more than anything else; I can't stand a static canvas' (the artist in: 'ernie barnes this is my art', YouTube, 28 July 2011). Athletes and artists share this deep connection, recognizing the nature of physicality and the performative translations that are essential to their endeavours. From illustrating his teammates to the dance halls and marching bands of his native Durham, the elongated, mannerist forms of his characters evince an understanding beyond the visual; of a figuration that embodies the mood, the intensity, and the soul of person.The individual, or moreover, the subjective experience, is at the heart of Barnes' artistic design. Throughout The Gospel Truth and his career at large, the closed eyes of Barnes' characters have been a definitive and iconic motif, one that speaks volumes of how he illustrates the plurality of black experience and culture. Barnes appreciated art as the most complete and intense form of expression of the inner life, but undoubtedly recognized the transformative power of representation in his own painting. The drawn eyelids of his characters he regarded as a manifestation of 'how blind we are to one another's humanity,' but he went still further: 'We stop at color quite often [...] We look upon each other and decide immediately: This person is Black, so he must be ... This person lives in poverty, so he must be ...' (the artist in: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 'How Athlete-Artist Ernie Barnes Captured Black Culture's 'Joy and Communal Dignity'', hollywoodreporter.com, 10 May 2019). The expressive body became the locus for Barnes' painting that literally embodied the humanity he sought to reproduce.As the golden light pierces the windows and rains upon the choral troupe and seated attendees, one cannot help but feel the ebullience and religiosity that makes The Gospel Truth such a profound celebration of black joy and community. It is an unashamedly hip-shaking vision whose rhythm and noise is tantalisingly close to breaking from the walls of its frame. For Barnes, it represents one of the most genuine and magnificent scenes of the America that he knew and was raised in, and thus one of the most collectible paintings to have come to market by the artist. A richly coloured and highly contrasted palette, it demonstrates the masterly confidence that Ba... 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