Life
1741-1806; b. 11 Dec., Water Lane, Cork; son of a shipmaster; at first
sailed with his father but turned to painting; ed. [Robert] West’s
Academy in Dublin; his “Conversion by St Patrick of the King of Cashel”
was the first painting to deal with Irish historical subject matter and
won him a premium, gaining him the attention of Edmund Burke, whom he
portrayed in James Barry, as Cato in a celebrated picture and later in
“Ulysses and a Companion”, with himself in the lesser role;
invited him to London by Burke, 1763 [var. 1764], introducing him to Reynolds,
Athenian Stewart and others, and supplying an allowance for four years
study in Rome, 1765-71, and a visit to Paris; won membership of Clementine
Academy in Bologna with “Philoctetes on the Isle of Lemnos”;
returned to England 1770; exhibited “Adam & Eve”, Royal
Academy (London) 1771-76; secured assoc. membership with “Venus Rising
from the Waves”, 1772; MRA, 1773; published Inquiry into Obstructions
to Arts in England (1775), a reply to Winckelmann demolishing his
theory that the genius of England is limited by its climate; founding
member of RHA (Dublin); decorated without payment the Great Room of the
Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in the Adelphi 1777-83, composing
six huge pictures illustrating the “Culture and Progress of Human
Knowledge”, during this time he lived on bread and apples, sketching
for engravers at night; published several engravings; voted 250 guineas
and the Society’s Gold Medal; RA professor of painting, 1782; invited
to paint scenes for John Boydell’s ‘Shakespeare Gallery’,
his few portraits acknowledged to be of very high quality; expelled from
Royal Academy in consequence of continuing quarrels with academicians,
1799; lived in poverty until 1805 when £1,000 from the Society of Arts
secured an annuity, but did not live to receive the first payment, d.
22 Feb; buried St. Paul’s; counted as the creator of the neo-classical
style in English painting. RR DNB DIB BREF WJM
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Works
Paintings (selected titles), “Baptism of Aongus King of Munster”,
“Venus Rising from the Sea”, “Medea Making Her Incantations”,
“Aeneas Escaping with His Family from the Sack of Troy”; “The
Education of Achilles”, “Narcissus”, “Jupiter and
Juno”, “Mercury Inventing the Lyre”, “The Death of
Adonis”, “Horatio Presenting his Son to the People”, and
“The Creation of Pandora”, “The Distribution of the Premiums”,
“Death of General Wolfe”, “Prince of Wales”, “Northumberland”,
“Edward Hooper”, “Ulysses and a Companion”, and “The
Progress of Human Culture”.
Writings, Inquiry into Obstructions to Arts in England (1775); E. Fryer, ed., The Works of James Barry, Esq., Historical Painter, 2 vols. (London 1809).
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Criticism
Patrick Kennedy, The Book of Modern Irish Anecdotes: Humour,
Wit and Wisdom, (Dublin: Gill, 1897) [infra],
D. Irwin, English Neo-Classical Art (London 1966), pp.38-43; J.
White, ‘Irish Romantic Painting’, Apollo, 84 (1966), pp.276-79;
Anne O. Cruikshank & the Knight of Glin [Desmond Fitzgerald],
Irish Portraits 1600-1860 (London: Paul Mellon Foundation for British
Art, 1969) [infra]; William L. Pressly, The
Life and Art of James Barry (1981); William L. Pressly, The Life
and Art of James Barry (Yale: Paul Mellen Center 1981), 320pp;
index; W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (Dublin:
IAP 1976) [infra]. See also entry by Luke Gibbons,
in W. J. McCormack, ed., Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture
(1999; 2001).
For Burke’s influence on Barry, see R. R. Wark, Journal of the Warburg Inst., xvii (1954), pp.382-84; Michael Wynne, ‘Reflections on “Art and Oratory”’, Éire-Ireland, 5, 2 (Summer 1970), pp.95-102; Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions (London: John Murray 1988) [infra].
Anthony Pasquin’s entry on James Barry in An Authentic History of the Professors of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Ireland (1796) is reprinted in Fintan Cullen, Ed., Sources in Irish Art: A Reader (Cork UP 2000).
Patrick Kennedy, The
Book of Modern Irish Anecdotes: Humour, Wit and Wisdom, (Dublin:
Gill, 1897), p.55, gives account of ‘Some of Barry’s Eccentricities’,
recounting his first meeting with Burke when his Baptism of Aongus
King of Munster was brought to Dublin to show in the RDS. In ensuing
remarks on his time in London and his separation from the academy, his
dirty habits in his worst - that is his noblest - times are reported by
Southey. The reader is referred to Gilbert’s ‘Streets of Dublin’, Irish
Quarterly Review, No. 10 (1852).
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this edn. 1984)
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Anne Cruikshank & [Desmond Fitzgerald] the Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits 1600-1860 (London: Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, 1969) [catalogue], remark that Barry would have hated to be included in an exhibition of portraiture: ‘Subscribing to the superiority of history-painting he felt portraiture to be an infinitely inferior art form [but] produced some magnificent pictures varying from the grand full-length the Duke of Northumberland to brilliant romantic self-portrait in NGI. [&c.]’ (p.19). Cruickshank and Glin further conjecture that Barry, in writing that ‘The Moderns, with all their vapouring, have invented nothing, not even in the most trifling articles of convenient household utensils ... is there anything new in the world?’ may have been influenced by Daniel Webb, whose comparable remarks in An Enquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760) he is known to have read. They further remark that Barry, a creator of neo-classical style in subject pictures later distilled his grand manner into simpler, more condensed genre of portrait painting - the latter considered his greatest achievement. Works cited include “The Distribution of the Premiums” [at RSA]; “Prince of Wales”; “Northumberland”; “Edward Hooper”; “Ulysses and a Companion” and “The Progress of Human Culture” (pp.52-53).
Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and Opinions (London: John Murray 1988), on Burke’s patronage of James Barry, whom he agreed with William to send to France and Italy; cites letter from William encouraging the plan of contribute to ‘another friend of worth and merit’; and Burke’s letter to Barry in Paris (Spring 1765) advising on diet [‘Singularity in diet is in general, I believe, unwholesome; your friend the doctor [Nugent] is that way of thinking ... Until you draw beauty to the last degree of truth and precision, you will not consider yourself possessed of [the powers of a true artist] ... Let me entreat you to go through a full course of anatomy, with the knife in your hand ...’ (Quoting Barry, Works, I, pp.53-55; Ayling, op. cit., q.p.)
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Notes
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Vol. 1 (1819), includes
a long account of Barry and a lithographical sketch of his exceedingly
tumble-down terrace house at Castle St. Oxford Market ( ascribed to ‘J.
Bryant del.’). Note that the same is printed in William L. Pressly, The
Life and Art of James Barry (Yale: Paul Mellen Center 1981),
where it is called ‘The House of James Barry’, in pencil and gray wash,
by Joshua Bryant, the original being held in Yale Centre for British Art,
New Haven, together with a ‘study of’ portrait of Burke (pl.).
Notes
A detail from “The Trinity of Modern Commerce”
is reproduced in Brian de Breffny, gen. ed., A Cultural Encyclopaedia
of Ireland (London: Thames & Hudson [1982], p.40).
Romance: A romantic self-portrait of Barry held in the National Gallery of Ireland appears on the dustjacket of the New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse, ed. Jerome J. McGann.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)