It is with the deepest sadness that I tell you of the passing of one of our most esteemed alumni, Will Barnet. Mr. Barnet passed at his home in Manhattan on November 13, 2012 after a long career as an extraordinary painter, printmaker, educator, father and friend. Mr. Barnet was 101.

A native of Beverly, MA, Mr. Barnet attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1928–1931, a place he loved for the seriousness of its faculty and students, and, too, for the richness of the Museum's collections. A lifelong student of the art of the past, his work, almost unique among his peers, synthesized the lessons of art history with contemporary concerns. A painter for over eighty years, Barnet is known for his simple, haunting images of human figures and animals. He experimented stylistically throughout the decades and early in his career was a key player in New York's Indian Space Painting movement, a collective of artists who based their abstract and semi-abstract work on Native American art. In the 1970s and later in his career, the influence of Rembrandt and Daumier emerged in his work, and he returned to figurative painting, typically in the form of portraits of his family, many being of his second wife Elena, and daughter Ona.

Barnet himself influenced a generation of artists, including James Rosenquist, Knox Martin, Paul Jenkins and Cy Twombly. His works entered virtually every major public collection in the United States, including, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was the focus of over eighty solo exhibitions held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design Museum, and the National Museum of American Art, among others.

Barnet was also the recipient of numerous honors, including the first Artist's Lifetime Achievement Award Medal, the College Art Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art's Lippincott Prize, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters' Childe Hassam Prize. He was an elected member of the National Academy of Design, the Century Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Barnet was awarded the 2011 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama and in 2012, France conferred the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters on Barnet. He was also the recipient of the SMFA's own Medal Award in 2011.

Mr. Barnet will be greatly missed by all those who loved and admired his singular talent and humanity. He is survived by his second wife, three sons, one daughter, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and many dear friends.

Click here to read The New York Times' touching tribute.

Image: Will Barnet in New York Studio, 2000. © Marc Royce.