Macena Alberta Barton (August 7, 1901 – 1986) was an American painter.
Barton was a native of Union City, Michigan.[1] She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1921 to 1925 while supporting herself as a bank clerk and proofreader. Among her instructors there was Leon Kroll, who encouraged her to study the work of the Post-Impressionists;[2] other teachers included John W. Norton, Wellington Reynolds, and Allen Philbrick.[3] She quickly won notice for her strong, striking surrealist paintings, and would go on to participate in exhibitions around Chicago throughout her career.[2] In 1927 she received the August Peabody Award from the University of Chicago, and she won first prizes from the Chicago Galleries Association from 1945 to 1956. Barton was a Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters, and belonged to both the Arts Club of Chicago and the Chicago Society of Artists during her career.[4]
Barton was a committed feminist who once challenged art critic Clarence Joseph Bulliet's assertion, in print, that no woman had ever painted a nude of the highest caliber,[5] and she has been claimed as the first American woman artist to paint a nude self-portrait.[2] She later became a lover of the married Bulliet, with whom she frequently appeared in public.[4] Her 1938 oil-on-canvas Loaves is owned by the Illinois State Museum.[6] Woman Sewing, an oil dating between 1935 and 1942, was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration and is currently in the collection of the art gallery at Western Illinois University.[7] A collection of her papers is in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.[8]