Born Kansas City, Aug. 14, 1891; died May 20, 1931. Painter. Illustrator. Writer. Satirist. Craftsman. Attended Kansas City schools and supplied illustrations to the Kansas City Star and Kansas City Post. Moved to New York in 1912. Studied in Paris but spent most of his career in New York City with occasional visits to France. Illustrated for various magazines and books including Judge and Puck magazines followed by Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Smart Set, New Yorker, and Life magazine. Also served as the drama editor for Life. Illustrated Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (1925) and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1928). Had a very stylized 19 and decorative style with thin lines, and flat tone or color.

A painter, cartoonist and drama critic, Ralph Baron was born in Kansas City, Missouri and established his career in New York City, after studying in Paris. However, he continued to return to France. Some of his early illustration work was for "Judge" and "Puck" magazines, and later he was an illustrator for "Cosmopolitan", "Vanity Fair", and "Life" magazines. He also did book and story illustrations including "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" by Anita Loos and "Nonsensorship" by Heywood Broun.

He "had a very stylized and decorative approach, usually satiric, drawn in thin lines and flat tone or color" (Reed 165) and this method seemed very suited to authors.

In 1931, he committed suicide, apparently unhappy over the breakup of his stormy marriage to Carlotta Monterey.

Source:
Walt Reed, "The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note from Mary Greene, Submitted July 2004

Natalie Barton, daughter of noted caricaturist Ralph Barton, was a classmate of my mother, Mary Ruth Crawford Herring, at Notre Dame de Sion, a private Catholic boarding school in Kansas City MO. They graduated from Sion as it is informally known in 1927, and Natalie immediately sailed for France to join the religious order of Notre Dame de Sion founded by two Catholic priests who converted to Judaism. The essential purpose of the order was to pray for the conversion of Jews. My sister, Laura Herring Cummings, graduated from Sion in 1950, and while during her years there she was taught by Mere Natalie, classmate of my mother and member of the religious order.

My mother tells of the walking tour of Europe that Natalie took with her father, Eugene O'Neill and Charlie Chaplin when she was still in high school. Ralph Barton was upset when his daughter became a Catholic nun, but his words were, "I've made such a mess of my life that I have no right to tell you what to do." Tragically, Ralph Barton committed suicide in 1931.