Barry, James
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- Barry, James
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(1741 - 1806), painter, s. of John Barry of Cork; exh. Dublin SA and studied under Jacob Ennis; London 1764; worked for James 'Athenian' Stuart; exh. RA 1771 - 6; ARA 1772; RA 1773; prof. of painting RA 1782 but expelled 1799.
1766 - 71 [dep. Paris 7 Sep. 1766] Turin (by 24 Sep.), Parma, Bologna, Florence, Rome (late Oct. 1766 - 22 Apr. 1770) visiting Naples and Herculaneum (Jan. 1769); Florence (26 Apr. 1770), Bologna (by 9 May), Venice, Bologna (by 8 Sep. - 17 Nov.), Modena, Parma (Dec. 1770 - 17 Jan. 1771), Piacenza, Milan, Turin (23 Jan. 1771)
With the support of Edmund Burke, Barry travelled to Italy, with Rome as his primary destination, in order to complete his education as a painter. He spent ten months in Paris before setting off through Burgundy and the Savoy to enter Italy via Mont Cenis. He arrived in Rome shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday. 'I am forming myself for a history painter', he was to explain on 8 April 1769; 'my studies have been so directed as to carry me as safely as I can through a little path, where, nothwithstanding the great number of painters in the world, I am not likely to be jostled down by too much company; and ... the prosecution of my plan depends more on the antique than it does on any thing else'.1 In November 1769 he wrote to his Irish mentor, Dr Joseph Fenn Sleigh, 'really and indeed I never before experienced any thing like that ardor, and I know not how to call it, that state of mind one gets on studying the antique. - A fairy land it is, in which one is apt to imagine he can gather treasures, which neither Raffael nor Michel Angelo were possessed of'.2 Like Reynolds before him, Barry did not attach himself to a particular studio but rather undertook a course of private study. By day he examined and copied the works of the classical canon and the old masters, while in the evenings he sketched from the nude figure, probably at the French Academy or the Accademia del Nudo.
Barry made a number of friends in the international community of artists then in Rome. He was particularly close to the Runciman brothers and to the sculptors James Paine junior and Nollekens; he was also friendly with the French painters L.-G. Blanchet, who painted his portrait, and Dominique Lefevre, and on leaving Rome he travelled with the Savoyard J.-F. Rigaud. Barry, though, was acutely aware of the tensions in this small community of ambitious young men competing for limited resources, writing on 26 February 1768; 'We are in number about thirty students, English, Scotch, and Irish; and as there is in our art every thing to set the passions of men afloat, all desiring consequence and superiority; it is no wonder if distrust, concealed hatred, and ungenerous attempts, are perhaps oftener experienced, than friendship, dignity of mind, or open square conduct'.3 With his paranoia and his exalted self-importance, he soon quarrelled with the power brokers such as Thomas Jenkins and James Byres, as he explained in a letter of 23 May 1767: ''Tis pity to see our gentlemen, who come out of England with the best intentions, and with a national spirit, so duped, and made even instruments of dissension 'twixt the artists here. The antiquary and dealer are each provided with his own set of puffers; and, in return, whatever gentleman falls into his hands, is taught to believe that, next to the old pictures and statues which they deal in, these are the only people for modern work, either here or at home'.4
Spending his time studying Italy's artistic treasures and with no patronage available, Barry had little opportunity or incentive to create his own paintings. The sole history painting he completed in Rome was The Temptation of Adam (NGI), which he sent for exhibition at the RA in 1771. A critic then complained that 'The only objection to this piece is, an insufficiency of drapery; a fault common to most young painters, immediately after the tour of Italy, on account of the difference of climate'.5 He painted one portrait, the Self-Portrait with Paine and Lefevre (NPG), a complex, idealised image of youthful genius in which Barry paints his two friends who, in turn, are painting the Torso Belvedere (a second portrait of Nollekens [YCBA] is doubtfully attributed to Barry). On his return to London from Rome, his longest stop was in Bologna, where he was elected to the Accademia Clementina, executing as his diploma piece Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos - the first painting of this classical subject since antiquity.
Toward the end of his stay, on 8 September 1770, Barry offered the opinion that 'Seeing and examining have brought me into that state of mind, that if any man was hardy enough to assert that the study of the antique [for form and composition] and Titian alone [for colouring] (exclusive of all other painters) was the surest and most likely method of producing perfection, I would not, I could not contradict him'.6 Yet it was Raphael and Michelangelo who proved the most enduring influence on his art.
1. Barry, Works, 1:159. See W. Pressly, Life and Art of James Barry, and James Barry, exh. cat., Tate Gall. [1983]. 2. Works, 1:139. 3. Ibid., 148. 4. Burke Corr., 1:122 - 3. 5. The Gazetteer, 8 May 1771. 6. Works, 1:208.
W.L. P.