The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-10 00:00:00

BARRY IN OBSCURITY.

" lie is up on his scaffold—Temper, his evil genius, up
with him—thinking of the Greeks, and just beginning his six
pictures of the History of Civilisation.' He means to be
three years only at this noble, gratuitous work, but he will
really be (if we poor men could read the future) six years,
and they will go well-nigh to break his heart. You hear
that jingle in his pocket, when ho plunges down at his
paint-box for fresh burnt sienna ?—that is sixteen shillings
—all the money the poor fellow has in the world. Dirty,
patched coat, frowzy hair, buckless shoes. No gold-laced
hat now, as when he met; Nollekens in Rome, or stopped to
see the wretched monks daub over, and finally destroy,
Leonardo's ' Last Supper.' He has, to tell the truth, a good
deal of the grime and cobwed of that miserable lodging of
his in Castle-street about him. He never smiles, he is
reckless, dogged, and at bay ; he works with clenched teeth
—you would think he hated the coloured creatures he is creat-
ing ; he is dreadfully in earnest, and snaps and bites at every
one ; he hates courtly Reynolds, and despises portrait
painting; he snubs oven Burke, his kind, early patron,
because his pride is hurt by feeling the weight of the obli-
gation. He came here at daylight from his dreary soli-
tude of broken windows and ventilating roof to this lofty
room, where there is pure light and air. He has been up
half the night in his old carpenter's shop, arranging his old
sketches and dusty printing-presses, amid cobwebs thick as
flannel, engraving at the bead of Lord Chatham, or Job,!,or
King Lear, or copying the birth of Venus, or some draw-
ing for Lord Aldborougb, or one of the customers that
Nollekens gets him. It is these things give him bread and
cheese, and literally keep the pot a-boiling.' He is the
Quixote of high art (so called because it is always hung
high at the Academy) ; there was no grave-gulf so deep
but this Irish Curtius was ready to leap into it."

" Sometimes, indeed, when our poor genius thinks of
his sordid lodgings, with its cobweb hangings, dirt, and
sordour—its rusty grate, its rusty grate, its inch deep of
dust—he fancies all the world against him, and demons of
Protestantism and dilletante-ism grinning from every
panel. It was in such a mood—enraged with Reynolds
and the face painters, and Gainsborough and the land-
scape painters, and everything and everybody—he resolved
to paint this room, as a proof and an example—he, with
sixteen shillings in his pocket—to the fools and to the
sordid 1"

" Indeed, this soured, injudicious man is a strange being,
has lived a strange life, and will die a strange death. He
lives alone, in that wretched den in Castle-street, where
Burke supped with him, and where Southey visited him ;
wrapped in a green baise coat, daubed with dirt and paint,
there, surrounded by sketches, and his Pandora ever star-
ing at him, he sits swearing at ' the man in Leicester-
fields,' looking like the miser Elwes. He wears a ragged
scarecrow wig, with a fringe of his own stiff grey hair peer-
ing from under it. His house is never cleaned ; he has no
servants, this London Timon ; no sheet to sleep on, no cur-
tain to his bed, but a nailed-up blanket. He will go on
till he is taken ill, and lies without food, groaning alone ;
till his misanthropic heart softens, and he has to crawl out,
wrapped up in a blanket, and lay himself down, with a
paper in his hand, asking the next passer-by to put him in
a chair, and have him carried to Mr. Carlisle, the doctor's,
in Soho-square. And after that fright he will get more
rational, and leave off his scarecrow wig, and sometimes
creep into society; but still he will never leave his den till
he be seized with fever at his St. Martin's-lane eating-
house, and cordials are given him, and he be removed to
kind Mr. Bonomi's, because the warring boys had plugged
the keyhole of his door with dirt and stones, and the den
cannot be opened ; and then, poor angry enthusiast, he
will die in the clean, soothing bed quietly; and he will lie
in state, in this very John-street room, the six pictures
looking dawn on him thoughtfully—Dr. Burney, the Sea
Nymphs, Orpheus, and Dr. Johnson, and Drake, and Cap-
tain Cook, and all. The Academy hated him, and shame-
fully stayed away from his funeral. George 111., always
obtuse and stubborn, made no sign. The king of one
idea liked smooth pictures, and men who could speak
smooth things : Barry was neither smooth with tongue
nor brush."

One of the most mournful of the lives here
chronicled is that of Procter, sculptor and
painter, whose youth was full of promise, am-
bition, and success, who won the Academy's gold
medal, and was considered one of the foremost
students of his time, and who, nevertheless, died
after years of penury and neglect, just as brighter
days were dawning for the forgotten and friendless
artist. The following passage tells a painful tale
of bitter disappointment and mortified ambition :