Designer
Bart Forbes
The sports painter who turned three Olympic Games — and one silver dollar — into art.
Most coin designers spend careers inside the Mint. Bart Forbes arrived from the other direction: a painter of marathons, ballgames, and Olympic athletes, hired to put motion into metal. On the 1996 Atlanta rowing dollar, he did exactly that — four men, one stroke, frozen in silver.
Who he is
Bart Forbes was born on July 3, 1939, in Altus, Oklahoma, into an Air Force family that moved often. His father took him to major-league ballgames, and the sport-watching never left him — it became the subject of a lifetime's work.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1961, then studied further at the ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles. After a brief stint in the U.S. Army, he settled in Dallas in 1967 and built a national illustration career without ever moving to New York — unusual in a field that then ran through Manhattan.
His paintings ran in Time, Sports Illustrated, Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, and Golf Digest. Corporate and broadcast clients followed — NBC, ABC, the NFL. But sport was always the heart of it: the Boston and New York marathons, the Kentucky Derby, America's Cup, PGA tournaments. The American Sport Art Museum and Archives named him its Sport Artist of the Year in 1986, and in 2017 the Society of Illustrators inducted him into its Hall of Fame.
The craft
Forbes paints athletes the way a fan remembers them — not posed, but mid-motion. His style is usually described as loose and painterly yet realistic: visible brushwork that still resolves into a recognizable figure, a runner's strain or a rower's pull. He has cited the French Impressionists as an influence and talks about chasing "a sense of feeling" rather than photographic exactness.
That instinct made him a natural choice for the Olympic movement. In 1987 the Korean Olympic Committee named him the official artist for the 1988 Seoul Summer Games. He went on to produce official Olympic art for the U.S. Olympic Committee at the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Games — three Olympiads in a row, a rare run for one artist.
He also designed more than twenty commemorative U.S. postage stamps, honoring figures from Lou Gehrig to Jesse Owens. So when the U.S. Mint needed a rower for the Atlanta program, it was hiring someone who already knew how to compress an athlete into a small, official rectangle of paper — and could do the same on a disc of metal.
The coin asks something a painting does not, though. A stamp prints in full color; a coin is struck — pressed from an engraved steel die — in a single tone, with depth carried only by relief, the height the design rises off the field. Forbes supplied the obverse drawing — the heads side — and the Mint's engravers translated his four-man crew into the low, readable relief a circulating-format coin demands.
Key facts
- Born
- July 3, 1939 — Altus, Oklahoma, USA
- Nationality
- American
- Training
- BFA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1961); ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles
- Best known for
- Sports illustration; official U.S. Olympic art (Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996)
- Coin work
- Obverse of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics rowing silver dollar
- Stamps
- 20+ U.S. commemorative postage stamps (incl. Lou Gehrig, Jesse Owens)
- Honors
- Sport Artist of the Year, 1986; Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, 2017
Questions about Bart Forbes
What coin did Bart Forbes design?
Forbes designed the obverse — the front, or heads side — of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics rowing silver dollar, showing four men rowing beneath the Olympic rings. The reverse, shared across the four 1996 Olympic silver dollars, was designed by Thomas D. Rogers, Sr.
Was Bart Forbes a U.S. Mint engraver?
No. Forbes was an independent painter and illustrator, not a Mint staff sculptor-engraver. He supplied the obverse design for the rowing dollar; the Mint's engraving staff turned his artwork into the working die. He came to coins from a long career in sports illustration and Olympic art.
What else is Bart Forbes famous for?
He was the official artist for three Olympic Games — Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, and Atlanta 1996 — painted for magazines like Sports Illustrated and Time, and designed more than twenty U.S. postage stamps. He was named Sport Artist of the Year in 1986 and entered the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2017.
Where did Bart Forbes study art?
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1961 and studied further at the ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles before building his career in Dallas.