His fourth grade teacher, Inez Labat, from the Bay St. Louis Public School, influenced his aesthetic development by encouraging his artistic growth.

A wealthy family, the Ponds, who spent summers at Bay St. Louis, invited Barthé to work for them as a houseboy in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Through his employment with the Ponds, Barthé broadened his cultural horizons and knowledge of art, and was introduced to Lyle Saxon, a local writer for the Times Picayune.

Impressed by his talent, Fr Harry F. Kane, SSJ encouraged Barthé to pursue his artistic career and raised money for him to undertake studies in fine art.

Barthé was a flattering portrait painter, and Thompson helped him to secure many lucrative commissions from the Chicago's affluent black citizens.

The critical acclaim allowed Barthé to enjoy numerous important commissions such as the busts of Henry O. Tanner (1928) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (1928).

[11] While many young artists found it very difficult to earn a living from their art during the Great Depression, the 1930s were Richmond Barthé's most prolific years.

He established his studio in Harlem in 1930 after winning the Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship at his first solo exhibition at the Women's City Club in Chicago.

[11] In October 1933, a major body of Barthé's work inaugurated the Caz Delbo Galleries at the Rockefeller Center in New York City.

This trip exposed Barthé to classical art, but also to performers such as Féral Benga and African-American entertainer Josephine Baker, of whom he made portraits in 1935 and 1951, respectively.

Among his African-American friends were Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Jimmie Daniels, Countee Cullen, and Harold Jackman.

Supporters who were white included Carl Van Vechten, Noel Sullivan, Charles Cullen, Lincoln Kirstein, Paul Cadmus, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., and Jared French.

[14] Eventually, the tense environment and violence of the city began to take its toll, and he decided to abandon his life of fame and move to Jamaica in the West Indies in 1947.

Garner copyrighted Barthé's artwork, hired a biographer to organize and document his work, and established the Richmond Barthe Trust.

[16] His other most notable public works include a monumental bronze of Toussaint L’Ouverture, (1950), in front of the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; 40-foot bronze equestrian statue Jean Jacques Dessalines, (1952), at Champs-du-Mars, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; a cast stone relief of American Eagle, (1940), on the façade of Social Security Board Building in Washington, DC; a marble Arthur Brisbane Memorial in New York City, (1939), a later enlarged version of a sculpture of Rose McClendon (1932), for Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, (c.1935);[17] and the design of several Haitian coins, still in use today.

[19] The huge 40-foot equestrian bronze of Jean Jacques Dessalines, (1952), was one of four heroic sculptures commissioned in 1948 by Haitian political leaders to mark independence celebrations.

[24] Barthé's work was paired with drawings by Delacroix, Matisse, Laurencin, Daumier, and Forain at the Caz-Delbo Gallery in 1933 in New York City.

[26] The retrospective which included works from private collections shown for the first time, Richmond Barthé: The Seeker was the inaugural exhibition of the African American Galleries at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi, curated by Margaret Rose Vendryes, PhD.

Many of Barthé's later work depicted religious subjects, including John the Baptist (1942), Come Unto Me (1945), Head of Jesus (1949), Angry Christ (1946), and Resurrection (1969).