He was reportedly only twelve years old when he received first prize, for his work in a Mississippi State Fair. Barthe and his family relocated to New Orleans when he was a teenager.

Barthe, who struggled to support himself at the beginning of his career, gained admission to the Art Institute in 1924, with the assistance local priest who acted as his sponsor. The moved to Chicago proved pivotal to Barthe’s success. The artist held his first solo exhibition at New York’s Caz-Delbo Gallery in 1924.

In the early stages of his career, Barthé developed a strong following for his paintings. However, as he matured as an artist, Barthé’s preferred medium transitioned from painting to sculpture. He garnered critical acclaim for his three-dimensional works—winning Rosenwald and Guggenheim fellowships.

This allowed Barthé to explore other options for showcasing his talent. He relocated to New York, locating his studio in Greenwich Village area. The move to New York provided Barthé with unfettered access to Harlem Renaissance luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Augusta Savage, and Carl Van Vechten who flourished there. A central figure in the Renaissance’s “self-proclaimed resurgence of black culture,” Barthé celebrated the sensuousness of the Black male body and racially infused, African inspired subjects such as figures such as Head of a Boy and African Man Dancing. Although Barthé seemingly adopted what was considered an apparent affinity for work of this type, he strongly rejected the circumscription of his work as “Negro Art.”

During the 1940s, at the pinnacle of his career in New York, Barthé’s work was much sought after. Surprisingly, he made what amounted to an ill-fated decision to leave the city for the Caribbean. Barthé enjoyed ever-increasing popularity in Jamaica. He was commissioned by the Haitian government to create a sculpture of that commemorated famed revolutionary leader Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Barthé’s absence, however, from the New York art scene led to a steep drop in his patronage. Two decades after his arrival in the Caribbean, Barthé sojourned to Europe. He visited and lived in several countries including Switzerland, Spain, and Italy before returning to the United States in 1977.

Barthé’s homecoming was less than stellar. He was impoverished and in failing health. He died in 1989, prior to a 1990 retrospective of his work by the American Art Association.