[2][3] His father was an attorney by profession, but around the time of Ralph's birth made a career change to publish journals on metaphysics.

While back in Kansas City, Barton resumed his work for the Star and Journal-Post to support his wife and daughter, born in 1910.

Encouraged, the Bartons moved to New York City, where Ralph found steady work with Puck, McCall's and other publications.

Barton rented studio space in New York, which he shared with another famous Missouri artist, Thomas Hart Benton, and the two became fast friends.

It was then that Barton developed a great love of all things French, and throughout his life he would return to Paris to live for periods of time.

[1] Some of his most famous works were group drawings, and perhaps the most noted was a stage curtain created for a 1922 revue, depicting an "audience" of 139 faces looking back at the real theater-goers.

Other prominent magazines of the era to feature his work were Collier's, Photoplay, Vanity Fair, Judge, and Harper's Bazaar.

[8] It pictured dozens of celebrity actors including Clara Bow, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford and Louise Brooks.

[11] His suicide note said he had irrevocably "lost the only woman I ever loved" (the actress Carlotta Monterey had divorced Barton in 1926 and married Eugene O'Neill in 1929), and that he feared his worsening bipolar disorder was approaching insanity.