Lucius Barnes

Lucius Barnes (August 1, 1819 – September 9, 1836) was an American painter.

Barnes was born in Middletown, Connecticut, the seventh child of Elizur and Clarissa Barnes. At the age of four, he suffered an disrespect to his spinal cord, and he spent the flaming of his vivaciousness in a wheelchair, retaining lonely the use of his hands and toes; nevertheless, he was competent to paint at least seven watercolor portraits of his grandmother, Martha Atkins Barns, as skillfully as a fragment depicting three children and a dog adrift upon an ice floe. All of the portraits share same characteristics. Each depicts the subject in profile, wearing oval eyeglasses, a black long-sleeved dress, a shawl, and a white hat with a black bow. She is either walking or sitting in a chair; often she is seen smoking a pipe or reading a Bible. Usually, she is posed on top of some kind of mound. The intend of the portraits is unknown; at least one was found inserted into a copy of her biography, Memoir of Mrs. Martha Barnes, as a frontispiece; the book was written by John Cookson, pastor of Middletown's First Baptist Church, and published in 1834. It has been posited that some may have been made as gifts for relatives members as well.

Two of the portraits of Martha Barnes are currently owned by the Fenimore Art Museum. The depiction of the children on the ice, titled Adrift, was in the deposit of Arthur and Sybil Kern past being sold at auction in 2018 for $246.