He is especially noted for his heroic sized Struggle of the Two Natures in Man at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, his twin sculpture groups at the Pennsylvania State Capitol, and his Lincoln statue in Cincinnati, Ohio.

His principal works include the allegorical Struggle of the Two Natures in Man" (1894, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York); The Hewer (1902, at Cairo, Illinois); The Great God Pan (1899, at Columbia University); the Rose Maiden (c.1902, at Muscatine, Iowa); the simple and graceful Maidenhood (1896, at Brookgreen Gardens).

The Great God Pan (1899), one of the first works Barnard completed after his return to America, was originally intended for the Dakota Apartments on Central Park West.

"[5] Barnard had a commanding personal manner: "He talks of art as if it were a cabalistic science of which he is the only astrologer", wrote the unsympathetic Gimpel; "he speaks to impress.

[9] Barnard died following a heart attack on April 24, 1938, at the Harkness Pavilion, Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

The sculptor's father is a clergyman, and the fortunes of the ministry afterward led him to Chicago, and thence to Muscatine, Iowa, where the son passed his boyhood.

In it is something of the largeness of the western prairies, something of the audacity of a life without tradition or precedent, a burning intensity of enthusiasm; above all, a strong element of mysticism which permeates all that Barnard does or thinks.

The first result of all this self sacrifice became tangible in that early group, a tombstone for Norway, in which the youth portrayed "Brotherly Love," a work of "weird and indescribable charm."

[30] South group: The Burden of Life: The Broken Law (marble, 1911), Pennsylvania State Capitol, Harrisburg.