# Biographia Hibernica/James Barry

JAMES BARRY,
The historical painter, was born in Cork, on October 11th, 1741. His father is reported by different biographers, to have been a victualler, a slop-seller, and a coasting trader, whether all, or either is not very material, the latter however, is most probable, as James is said to have accompanied him, during his early youth, in several voyages across the channel; but the boy had no taste for navigation, and the father it seems, had as little taste for any thing else.—His son's intellectual propensities he regarded with mortal aversion, but at length finding them insurmountable, he submitted to an evil which could not be resisted, and consigned him, with prudential regrets and dreary forebodings, to the sterile pursuits of literature and art. To these pursuits the atmosphere of a trading sea-port was not very congenial; but it was part of Barry's unlucky fatality to subvert the beautiful theories of atmospheric influence. Genius creates its own opportunities, and Barry, amidst the impediments of poverty and sordid society, distinguished himself in such a degree in his scholastic acquirements, as to excite the admiration of his rivals, and the attention of his superiors.—He was constitutionally ascetic, exhibiting in early youth, a predilection for those hardships and privations in which his subsequent fortunes so bountifully indulged him; he loved to sit up all night, drawing or transcribing from books, and whenever he allowed himself the recreation of sleep, he preferred the boards to his bed. Whether he ever condescended to relax from this severity of discipline, it is difficult to guess; the most particular of his biographers, indeed, informs us, that "he was not behind other boys in such pastimes and mischiefs as boys are sometimes given to," but he adds, in the same page, "that his habits never resembled those of ordinary boys, as he seldom mixed in their plays or amusements." From this species of evidence, it would be presumptuous to form a conclusion.
​Barry had a choice of religions; his father was a protestant, his mother a catholic, and her creed he adopted, as she had probably taken most pains to form his opinions; yet, although this early pre-disposition was confirmed by his own inquiries, for he had made himself by intense investigation, a profound polemic, he appears at one period to have vaccillated, like most other young men, in his religious opinions, and had nearly enrolled himself among that illuminated class of philosophers who modestly deny every thing which they are unable to comprehend; Butler's Analogy of Religion, put into his hands by Burke, rescued him from the gulph of infidelity; and it had been well if he had imbibed the moderation together with the conviction, which breathes through that admirable treatise; but enthusiastic in all things, he rushed from doubt to bigotry, which in after-life, was confirmed to such a pitch of inveteracy, that he was once heard to consign Pope to everlasting perdition, for the heterodox liberality of his Universal Prayer.
At the age of two and twenty, Barry came to Dublin, and exhibited, at the Society of Arts in that capital, an historical picture which he had recently painted, on the subject of a tradition relative to the first arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland. This picture, it may be presumed, was sufficiently defective, but Achilles when brandishing the sword in petticoats, though not, perhaps, evincing all the masterly management, which he afterwards acquired on that instrument, still shewed himself Achilles; and Barry, in this his first appeal to the public, exhibited such proofs of the divinity within him, as induced Burke to take him under his immediate patronage.—His, however, was not that capricious patronage, which delights its vanity with having caught a genius, and discards it as soon as caught, to angle for others. Shortly afterwards, he brought Barry with him to England, provided him. introductions and employments, and in the ensuing year sent him to Rome.
​Barry's enthusiastic temper appears, as might have been expected, to have caught new ardour from the contact of congenial minds, during his short residence in London. The following extract from one of his letters during that period, to his friend Dr. Hugh, deserves to be inscribed in characters of adamant, for the edification of all students in all professions:—My hopes are grounded, in a most unwearied intense application; I every day centre more and more upon my art; I give myself totally to it, and, except honour and conscience, am determined to renounce every thing else."
This power of intense application, Barry did certainly possess; but he was very deficient in another qualification, equally indispensable in the enterprises of genius,—he wanted that cool, abstracted magnaminity, which, while it absorbs the man in his pursuits, secures his temper against petty interruptions, the clamours of enemies, the admonitions of friends, hints, sneers, prognostics, and the whole etcætera of insignificancies, which every man finds himself beset with, who starts forth from the multitude, and marks out for himself a career of ambition beyond their sympathy or comprehension. Barry found at Rome, a set of persons who, at that time at least, were as natural adjuncts to the circles of art, as butterflies and reptiles to a flower garden; wealthy simpletons who came to purchase taste and pictures, and needy knaves who were still more ready to sell those articles. With this latter class of persons, it is a professional maxim to deny merit to all living artists: Barry received this condemnation among the rest; but instead of refuting his calumniators by the silent energies of his pencil, he impoliticly engaged them with their own weapons, and became an infinite sufferer, in a warfare of dispute, sarcasm, and abuse. His friends, the Burkes, indeed, seem to have been suspicious, that Barry, even without the spur of provocation, had a pre-disposition to this species of contest, and Edmund Burke addressed to him at this time, a letter on the subject, which we subjoin, as ​an invaluable admonition to all persons subjected to similar infirmities:—
"As to any reports concerning your conduct and behaviour, you may be very sure they could have no kind of influence here; for none of us are of such a make, as to trust to any one's report, for the character of a person, whom we ourselves know. Until very lately, I had never heard any thing of your proceedings from others; and when I did, it was much less than I had known from yourself,—that you had been upon ill terms with the artists and virtuosi in Rome, without much mention of cause or consequence. If you have improved these unfortunate quarrels to your advancement in your art, you have turned a very disagreeable circumstance to a very capital advantage. However you may have succeeded in this uncommon attempt, permit me to suggest to you, with that friendly liberty which you have always had the goodness to bear from me, that you cannot possibly have always the same success either with regard to your fortune or your reputation. Depend upon it, that you will find the same competitions, the same jealousies, the same arts and cabals, the emulations of interest and of fame, and the same agitations and passions here, that you have experienced in Italy; and if they have the same effect on your temper, they will have just the same effects on your interest, and be your merit what it will, you will never be employed to paint a picture. It will be the same at London as at Rome; and the same in Paris as in London; for the world is pretty nearly alike in all its parts; nay, though it would perhaps be a little inconvenient to me, I had a thousand times rather you should fix your residence in Rome than here, as I should not then have the mortification of seeing with my own eyes, a genius of the first rank, lost to the world, himself, and his friends, as I certainly must, if you do not assume a manner of acting and thinking here, totally different from what your letters from Rome have described to me. That you have had just subjects of indignation always, and of anger often, I do no ways doubt; who can ​live in the world, without some trial of his patience? But believe me, my dear Barry, that the arms with which the ill dispositions of the worldare to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled to us, and we reconciled to it, are moderation, gentleness, a little indulgence to others; and a great deal of distrust to ourselves, which are not qualities of a mean spirit, as some may possibly think them; but virtues of a great and noble kind, and such as dignify our nature, as much as they contribute to our repose and fortune; for nothing can be so unworthy of a well composed soul, as to pass away life in bickerings and litigations, in snarling and scuffling with every one about us. Again and again, dear Barry, we must be at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, yet very much for our own. Think what my feelings must be, from my unfeigned regard to you, and from my wishes that your talents might be of use, when I see what the inevitable consequences must be, of your persevering in what has hitherto been your course ever since I knew you, and which you will permit me to trace out to you before-hand. You will come here; you will observe what the artists are doing, and you will sometimes speak a disapprobation in plain words, and sometimes in a no less expressive silence. By degrees you will produce some of your own works. They will be variously criticised; you will defend them; you will abuse those that have attacked you; expostulations, discussions, letters, possibly challenges will go forward; you will shun your brethren, they will shun you. In the mean time gentlemen will avoid your friendship, for fear of being engaged in your quarrels; you will fall into distresses, which will only aggravate your disposition for farther quarrels; you will be obliged for maintenance to do any thing for any body; your very talents will depart for want of hope and encouragement, and you will go out of the world fretted, disappointed, and ruined. Nothing but my real regard for you, could induce me to set these considerations in this light before you. Remember we are born to serve and to adorn our country, and not to contend ​with our fellow-citizens, and that in particular your business is to paint and not to dispute."
William Burke appears to have had less faith in the efficacy of advice, for after venturing a little on the same subject to Barry, he consolingly adds, he might as well have spared himself his labour, for if such was Barry's nature, it would always remain so—the event proved him the better philosopher. Barry, however, when disengaged from these petty contentions, set in vehemently to his studies, and investigated the great works of ancient and modern art, with profound and indefatigable attention. In his modes of study, as in every thing else, he was peculiar; his drawings from the antique were made by means of a patent delineator, a mechanical process which saves all trouble to the eye and band. Barry considered the spontaneous correctness of drawing, acquired by the habitoal exercise of those organs, a thing of small comparative importance; but by minutely dividing and subdividing, enlarging and diminishing, the studies made by the above-named method, he sought to establish in his mind an abstract canon of proportion.—Barry, indeed, delighted in the idealities of his art, and shrunk from the grossness of executive excellence: nevertheless, he made some copies of Titian, which satisfied his ambition, on the subject of colour; and if he was mistaken in supposing that the copyings of Titian alone can make a colourist, without perpetual recurrence to nature, he by no means stands alone in that error. But of his ardour and success in the study of those masters, whose qualities were more congenial to his own, Raphael and Michael Angelo, his subsequent works furnish an illustrious evidence.
He remained in Rome five years, and was elected during that period, a member of the Clementine Academy at Bologna, on which occasion he painted as his picture of reception, Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos. He returned to England in 1770, destitute of all but art, yet elate in the consciousness of his talents and acquirements, and panting for an opportunity of executing some great public work, ​which should serve at once as his own monument, and as a vindication of bis country against the aspersions of metaphysical drivellers (Winckelman and others), who had asserted its utter incapacity for the historical branch of the fine arts.—A design was however formed of decorating St. Paul's Cathedral, with the works of our most eminent painters and sculptors, and Barry was to have been employed on the subject of, "The Jews rejecting Christ when Pilate entreats his release;" but the scheme was discouraged, and its probable success can now be only a subject of speculation.
The year after his return, he exhibited his picture of Adam and Eve, and in the year following, his Venus Anadyomene; this picture is unquestionably, in all that relates to form and character, an exquisite personification of female grace and beauty. In 1775, he published an Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of Arts in England; this work is equally valuable for its research, its acuteness, and its patriotism but Barry hastened to the practical proof, that neither fog nor frost can repress the aspirations of genius. He proposed to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, to paint gratuitously, a series of pictures, allegorically illustrating the culture and progress of human knowledge, which now decorate the great room of the Society; he persisted in this great work amidst poverty and privation, and completed it in seven years. Whatever may be its deficiencies in colour and execution, it exhibits a mastery of design, a grasp of thought, and a sublimity of conception; with such an appropriation of those powers to the purposes of ethical utility, as secures to the Author a triple wreath of immortality as an artist, a philanthropist, and a philosopher. In a country like England, when an individual was found who had devoted himself to a protracted martyrdom, in an attempt to add the last gem to her diadem, to crown her pre-eminence in literature and ​arms, with the honours of historic art, it might have been expected, that such an individual had some slight claim on her gratitude, and that from the plethoric superabundance of her wealth, she would have dropped a mite, which, however insignificant in itself, would have secured her enthusiastic champion from future indigence and embarrassment. Barry's performance passed before the public vision, with as little observance as the last new pantomime, and was certainly less productive; the profits of the exhibition amounted to 500l to which 200l. were added by a vote of the Society, for whose rooms they had been painted, and this sum comprises nearly the whole produce of Barry's professional career. A man of more constitutional placidity than Barry, might have felt irritated, that after having expended on a public work all the fruits of his study, and the energies of his youth, his labours had left him no chance of independence, unless that independence should be purchased by a sacrifice of all the comforts and conveniences of life. We regret to add what truth extorts from us, that Barry's natural irritability seems to have increased from this period, even to a degree of exasperation; and that his powers of mind, at least in what relates to the exercise of his art, seem to have sunk in a gradual declension. His picture of Pandora, which we gladly refrain from commenting on, is too explicit a proof of this last assertion; and his disputes with the Academy are as strong an evidence of the former. He had been elected professor of painting in 1782, and almost from the period of his instalment, he had been engaged in a perpetual contest with his fellow-academicians: these dissensions became at last so insufferable, that the council preferred against him a formal body of charges, and in a general assembly of the Academics, the offences of the professor were considered of such magnitude, that he was divested of his office, and expelled the Academy.
BARRY’S HOUSE.
IN CASTLE STREET – OXFORD MARKET.
When we consider Barry's style, in comparison with other works of art, it is difficult to assign it a specific place or degree. He is the proselyte of no particular master, the disciple of no particular school. That stamp of originality which marked every feature of his character, is strongly conspicuous in his works. His works, indeed, are but an amplification of his character, for he did not possess that protean faculty of genius which can assume the form and colour of the object it creates; that faculty by which Shakspeare identified himself with Falstaff, Hamlet, and Hotspur: Barry's genius, in this particular, bore a nearer resemblance to that of Dante and Milton. The artist is perpetually present in his work; but this species of obstinate personality has an interest of its own, and is never insipid, though it wants the charm of versatility.
Barry, with the mind of a philosopher, had little of the feelings of a painter. He delighted to construct magnificent systems of ethics; and he employed his pencil to illustrate those systems, sometimes with as little reference to the natural and intrinsic capabilities of art, as the herald painter, when arranging his quarterings, gives to the harmony of colours. The picture of "Final Retribution" is a sufficient evidence of this: that composition, in whatever relates to the philosophy of it, is undoubtedly admirable. Infinite judgment, and a most prolific invention, are displayed in the selection, association, and employment of its multitudinous groups; but, surely, nothing in painting was ever so utterly unpicturesque as ​this work in its general effect. The picture is rather an index to the book of explanation, than the book to the picture; and the eye wanders in vain amidst a promiscuous throng of kings, quakers, legislators, and naked Indians, for a centre of interest and a point of unity. If it be objected that this defect was inherent in the subject, the inference is, that the subject ought not to have been chosen; but, even when such incongruities were no natural adjuncts, Barry sometimes went in search of them. He stopped at nothing in the shape of an illustration; and, in the picture of the "Triumph of the Thames," considering music a necessary accompaniment on that occasion, he has thrown a musician in his wig into the water, who, luckily for himself, being an expert swimmer, is seen coquetting among the naiads.
Barry's inadequacy, in the peculiar qualifications of a painter, is still more evident in his colouring and execution. His works at the Adelphi are stained designs rather than pictures. In a work of such extent, the artist may, perhaps, be excused for a deficiency in some qualities which are indispensable in smaller performances but, if the absence of tone and surface be permitted on the score of magnitude, that extenuation cannot apply to the want of clear and characteristic colouring. If the figures of Rubens are said to have fed on roses, those of Barry may be pronounced to have battened on bricks. One frowsy red pervades his flesh tones, and, consequently, there is little or no complexional distinction of age, sex, or character; certainly, the eye is not offended by any glaring obtrusion of tints; and, so far, the pictures are in harmony. There can be no discord where there is no opposition.
We have particularised Barry's defects without compunction, because, giving them their full force, he stands on an eminence which bids defiance to criticism. If Socrates had been a painter instead of a sculptor, and had chosen to illustrate his doctrines by a graphical, rather ​than a rhetorical exhibition, we may imagine that he would have selected such subjects, and have treated them precisely in the manner which Barry has done. Admitting some trifling derelictions, he was great in every part of his art which is abstractedly intellectual. The conception of the work on "Human Culture" could only have originated in a mind of gigantic order; nor is the general grandeur of the design more extraordinary than the skill with which so large a mass of components has been bent to the illustration of one particular idea. Nor is it to be inferred that he was deficient in all the essentials of manual performance: though not a great painter, he was certainly a great designer. He was scientifically acquainted with the human figure, and his drawing, if not always graceful, is invariably bold and energetic. In composition, whenever the subject was well chosen, he takes a still higher ground. The picture of "The Victors at Olympia," (his finest production,) is at once, a personification of history, and the vision of a poet. It is a gorgeous assemblage of classical imagery; the whole seems inspired by one spirit, and that, the spirit of ancient Greece. In expression, though seldom intense, he was never inappropriate. The Angelic Guard in the "Final Retribution" may be adduced as an instance of accurate discrimination in this particular. The countenance of the angel who holds the balance of good and evil is pregnant with divine intelligence; and his, who leans over the brink of Tartarus, commiserating the condemned, has always struck us as an image of exquisite pathos and beauty.
Barry's deficiency in executive skill is more extraordinary, since he seems to have had a strong relish, and a keen perception of it, in the works of the old masters. Any one who should have formed an opinion of bis pictures from a previous perusal of his writings, would expect to find in them all the refinements and delicacies of surface and of colour. But this disparity between the faculties of criticism and performance is not peculiar to Barry, and it ​proves at least the fallacy of that theory which affirms "genius" to be the operation of "a mind of large general powers accidentally directed to a particular pursuit."—This was the hypothesis of Sir J. Reynolds, who likewise confuted it in his practice; for while in his discourses he spoke with comparative contempt of colouring, he made it in his practice the chief object of his ambition; and who, though he lauded the style of Michael Angelo with rapturous enthusiasm, yet never attempted a picture in that style. The fact is, the abstract reasonings of this great artist were borne down by the strong influence of his particular temperament. What accidental influence, or system of discipline could have given Rubens delicacy, or Rembrandt grace? could have made Hogarth an epic painter, or Barry a humorous one?—We do not consider these observations irrelevant, because we think the hypothesis pernicious; nothing is more essential in all pursuits of taste and intellect than that the student should ascertain as speedily as possible, the exact direction of his powers—that he may not be led by a misconception of his own character to waste the energies of his application, in attempting to force a passage through regions which Apollo has barricaded against him.
There have been so many anecdotes told of Barry, all of which have been "highly authenticated," that we almost despair of presenting the reader with one which he has not heard before. The following, however, has never been given to the public in all the detail its merits deserve, and is moreover so graphically characteristic, that we could not answer its omission to our conscience.
He resided in a little house, in Little St. Martin's Lane, with no companions but a venerable cat, and an old Irish woman who served him in the capacity of factotum. He was too much of the stoic philosopher to be over solicitous in the articles of furniture, or the style of neatness; and his house-keeper was of a character little disposed to annoy ​him, by the troublesome operations of domestic cleanliness. His time was chiefly spent in the company of a few excellent pictures, and a few choice books, chiefly histories, enveloped, like himself, in smoke and dust; his culinary operations were of a piece with the rest, and in his ardour for his favourite pursuits, so far was he from being a man who lived only to eat, that he scarcely ate to live.
Sauntering one day alone in St. James's Park, he accidentally met Burke, who accosted him in a most kind and manner; expressing much pleasure on seeing him, and gently chiding him for not having called to see him for so many years. Barry, with great freedom and cheerfulness, recognised their old acquaintance and friendship in earlier years; but he said it was a maxim with him when any of his old friends soared into regions so far above his sphere, seldom to trouble them with his visits or obsolete recollections; he considered therefore his old friend Burke, as now too great a man for intercourse with a groundling like himself. Mr. Burke, rather hurt at this unmerited taunt, (for no man was less proud, more kind, or assumed so little on the score of rank and talents,) pressed Barry to a friendly visit at his house: but Barry insisted on precedence in the march of hospitality, and invited the statesman to come next day, and take with him a friendly beef-steak, at his house in Little St. Martin's Lane; to which Mr. Burke agreed, and kept his appointment. When he rapped at the door, however, Dame Ursula who opened it, at first denied that her master was at home; but on Mr. Burke's expressing some surprise and announcing his name, Barry overheard his voice, and ran down stairs in the usual trim of abstracted genius, utterly regardless of his personal appearance: his scanty grey hair,unconscious of the comb, sported in disordered ringlets round his head; a greasy green silk shade over his eyes, served as an auxiliary to a pair of horn-mounted spectacles, to strengthen his vision. His linen was none of the whitest, and a sort of roquelaure served the purposes of ​a robe de chambre; but it was of the composite order, for it was neither jockey-coat, surtout, pelisse, nor tunic, but a mixture of all four; and the chronology of it might have puzzled the Society of Antiquarians to develop. After a welcome greeting, he conducted his eloquent countryman to his dwelling-room on the first floor, which served him for kitchen, parlour, study, gallery, and painting room; but it was at that moment so befogged with smoke, as almost to suffocate its phthisicky owner, and was quite impervious to the rays of vision. Barry apologized; d———d the bungling chimney doctors; hoped the smoke would clear up, as soon as the fire burned bright; and was quite at a loss to account for "such an infernal smother," until Mr. Burke, with some difficulty convinced him he was himself the cause: for, in order to remedy the errors of his chimney, he had removed the old stove grate from the fire-place into the centre of the room, where it was sustained by a large old dripping pan, by way of a platform, to save the carpet from ignition; and he had been occupied for half an hour with the bellows to cheer up the coals to a blaze. He was now prevailed on to assist bis guest in removing the grate to its proper situation, and the windows being thrown open, the smoke soon vanished. He now proceeded to conduct his guest to see his pictures in certain apartments on the higher story, where many exquisite pieces without frames, stood edgewise on the floor, with their fronts to the walls, to guard them from injury; and by the aid of a sponge and water, their coats of dust were removed, and their beauties developed much to the delight of the guest.—Having lectured con amore upon the history and merits of the paintings, his next object was to display to his guest the economy of his bed-room: the walls of this apartment, too, were occupied by frameless pictures, veiled in perennial dust, which was likewise sponged off, to develop their beauties, and display some first-rate gems of the art. In a sort of recess between the fire-place and the wall, stood a stump bedstead ​without curtains, and counterpaned by a rug, bearing all the vestiges of long and arduous service, and tinted only by the accumulated soil of half a century, which no scourer's hand had ever prophaned. "That, Sir," said the artist, "is my bed; I use no curtains, because they are unwholesome, and I breathe more freely, and sleep as soundly as if I reposed on down, and snored under velvet.—But there, my friend," continued he, pointing to a broad shelf, fixed high above the bed, and fortified on three sides by the walls of the recess, "that is my chef-d'œuvre—'Ecod I have outdone them at last."—"Out-done whom?" said Mr. Burke.—The rats, the d——d rats, my dear friend," replied Barry, rubbing his palms in ecstacy, "they beat me out of every other security in the house—could not keep any thing for them, in cupboard or closet; they devoured my cold meat, and bread and cheese, and bacon: but there they are now, you see, all safe and snug, in defiance of all the rats in the parish." Mr. Burke could not do less than highly commend his invention, and congratulate him on its success. They now descended to the first room; Barry, whose only clock was his stomach, felt it was his dinner hour, but totally forgot his invitation, until Mr. Burke reminded him of it:—"Ods-oh! my dear friend," said he, "I beg your pardon: so I did invite you, and it totally escaped my memory—but if you will sit down here and blow the fire, I'll step out and get a charming beef steak in a minute." Mr. Burke took the bellows to cheer up the fire—and Barry his departure to cater for the banquet. And shortly after, he returned with a comely beef-steak, enveloped in cabbage leaves, crammed into one pocket; the other was filled with potatoes; under each arm was a bottle of port, procured at Slaughter's coffee-house; and in each hand a French brick. An antique gridiron was placed on the fire, and Mr. Burke performed the office of cook; while Barry as butler, set the table, which he covered with a table cloth, perfectly geographical; for the stains of former soups and gravies bad given it the ​appearance of a Map of the World. The knives and forks were veterans brigaded from different sets, for no two of them wore the same uniform, in blades, handles, or shapes. Dame Ursula cooked the potatoes in Tipperarian perfection, and by five o'clock, the hungry friends sat down like Eneas and Achates to make a hearty meal: after having dispatched the "pinguem ferinam," they whiled away the time till nine o'clock, over their two flaggons "veteris Bacchi,"—
"And jok'd, and laugh'd, and talk'd of former times."
Mr. Burke has often been heard to declare, that this was one of the most amusing and delightful days of his whole life.
* ↑ Subsisting the greater part of the time on bread and apples.
* ↑ A lycographic sketch of which, from an original drawing, we present the reader with.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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