page_title: George Barret Sr.
section_title: William Lock of Norbury Park.
hierarchical_section_title: George Barret Sr. / Life / Move to England and patronage / William Lock of Norbury Park.
caption_attribution_description: The Drive, Norbury Park
context_page_description: George Barret Sr. RA was an Irish landscape artist who is best known for his oil paintings, but also sometimes produced watercolours. He left Ireland in 1762 to establish himself as an artist in London and rapidly gained recognition as a leading artist of the period. He exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain and was able to gain patronage from many leading art collectors. Barrett with other leading members left the Society in 1768 to found the Royal Academy, where he continued to exhibit until 1782. Barrett appears to have travelled extensively in England including the Lake District and the Isle of Wight, Wales, and Scotland to undertake commissions for his patrons. Barret suffered from asthma and this caused him to move in 1772 to Westbourne Green, at the time a country village to the west of Paddington. While he earned considerable quantities of money from his paintings, he has been described as being ‘‘feckless’’ with money. He was helped in 1782 by Edmund Burke, with whom he had become friends when Burke attended Trinity College, Dublin.
context_section_description: William Lock, a connoisseur and art critic, commissioned Thomas Sandby in 1774 to build a new house for him at Norbury Park near Mickleham in Surrey. Lock was in correspondence with William Gilpin and the house was sited to take full advantage of the picturesque qualities of the area. Inside, the house in the Painted Room Barret was assisted by Giovanni Battista Cipriani,  Pastorini and Gilpin, with Cipriani doing the figures, Gilpin the cattle and Pastorini the sky. Eight painted pilasters appear to support a leafy arbour of trellis work, open to the sky: and on the walls of the room are views of distant countryside. Three are painted as a pastiche of scenes in Cumberland.  One is natural,  the view to the south towards Box Hill. At sunset, the light from the setting sun coincides on the western wall with the direction of light from a painted sunset so all the landscapes appear to be illumined by the same source. Barret also supplied an oil painting of the tree-lined drive at Norbury Park to William Lock. This is now in Norwich Castle Museum.
caption: The Drive, Norbury Park by George Barret. 1775
exif: {}