In general, it must happen in the first stages of the arts, that as none but those who had a natural genius for them would attempt to practise them,—so none but those who had a natural taste for them, would pretend to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalculable advantage to the man of true genius; for it is no other than the privilege of being tried by his peers. In an age when connoisseurship had not become a fashion; when religion, war, and intrigue, occupied the time and thoughts of the great, only those minds of superior refinement would be led to notice the works of art, who had a real sense of their excellence; and, in giving way to the powerful bent of his own genius, the painter was most likely to consult the taste of his judges. He had not to deal with pretenders to taste, through vanity, affectation, and idleness. He had to appeal to the higher faculties of the soul,—to that deep and innate sensibility to truth and beauty, which required only fit objects to have its enthusiasm excited,—and to that independent strength of mind, which, in the midst of ignorance and barbarism, hailed and fostered genius whereever it met with it. Titian was patronised by Charles V. Count Castiglione was the friend of Raphael. These were true patrons and true critics; and, as there were no others (for the world, in general, merely looked on and wondered), there can be little doubt that such a period of dearth of factitious patronage would be most favourable to the full developement of the greatest talents, and to the attainment of the highest excellence.
By means of public institutions, the number of candidates for fame, and pretenders to criticism, is increased beyond all calculation, while the quantity of genius and feeling remain much the same as before; with these disadvantages, that the man of original genius is often lost among the crowd of competitors who would never have become such, but from encouragement and example, and that the voice of the few whom nature intended for judges, is apt to be drowned in the noisy and forward suffrages of shallow smatterers in Taste.
JAMES BARRY
Barry (James) an eminent painter, was born in Cork, in Ireland, October 11, 1741. His father had been a builder, and at one time of his life, a coasting trader between the two countries of England and Ireland. To this business of a trader was James destined, and he actually made, when a boy, several voyages; but these voyages being forced upon him, he on one occasion ran away from the ship, and on others discovered such an aversion to the life and habits of a sailor, as to induce his father to quit all hopes of him in this line, and to suffer him to pursue his inclinations, which led him to drawing and study. When on board his father’s vessel, instead of handling sails and ropes, and climbing the mast, he was generally occupied with a piece of black chalk, sketching the coast, or drawing figures, as his fancy directed him. When his father found that the idea of making a sailor of him must be given up, he permitted him to acquire as much instruction as the schools of Cork afforded; but long retained his aversion to the chalk drawings, with which the floors and walls of the house were covered; the boy being always engaged in some attempt at large figures, and early catching at the means of representing action, attitude, and passion. It was at a very early period of his life that some bookseller in Ireland, undertaking to reprint a set of fables or emblems, young Barry offered to furnish the drawings, and, as it is believed, helped to etch the engravings, such as they were. At the schools in Cork, which he was sent to, he was distinguished by his parts and industry above his school-fellows; his habits differed from those of ordinary boys, as he seldom mixed in their games or amusements, but at those times stole off to his own room, where he worked at his pencil, or was studying some book that he had borrowed or bought. He would spend whole nights in this manner at his studies, to the alarm of his mother, who dreaded his injuring his health or setting fire to the house, and who often kept up his sister or the servant to watch him. His allowance of money he spent in buying books or candles to read by; he sometimes locked himself up in his room for days, and seldom slept upon his bed, or else made it so hard as to take away the temptation or luxury of lying long in it. Perhaps the unsocial and ascetic turn of his temper, which thus early manifested itself, might be remarked as the source both of the misfortunes of his life, and the defects of his genius. Common humanity, a sense of pleasure, and a sympathy with the feelings of those around us, is not more necessary to success in life, than it probably is to success in the fine arts. Few things can be more fatal to the artist than this sort of indifference to the common pleasures and pursuits of life. If affected, it is bad; if real and constitutional, it is even worse. It stuck to poor Barry to the last. It is not to be understood that, at this period of his life, he led the life of an absolute recluse, for he could and did occasionally join in any feats going on in the neighbourhood, and was not behind other boys in such pastimes and mischief as boys are usually fond of. An adventure which happened to him about this time, and which left a strong impression on his mind, is worth mentioning here. In one of his rambles in the neighbourhood, he entered, one winter’s evening, an old, and, as he thought, an uninhabited house, situate in a narrow bye-lane in the city of Cork. The house was without doors or windows; but curiosity impelled him to enter, and, after mounting a rotten staircase, which conducted to empty rooms on different floors, he arrived at the garret, where he could just discern, by the glimmering light of a few embers, two old and emaciated figures, broken by age, disease, and want, sitting beside each other, in the act, as far as their palsied efforts would permit, of tearing each other’s faces; not a word being uttered by either, but with the most horrible grimaces that malice could invent. They took no notice of his entrance, but went on with their deeds of mutual hate, which made such an impression on the boy that he ran down stairs, making his own reflections, which he afterwards found verified through life, that man and all animals are malicious and cruel in proportion as they are impotent; and that age and poverty, two of the worst evils in human life, almost always add to the calamities inherent in them by arts of their own creating. In general, his great desire to improve his mind led him to seek the society of educated men; who were not averse to receive him, seeing his active and inquisitive disposition, and his seriousness of manner, couched under a garb the plainest and coarsest; for he adopted this kind of attire from his childhood, not from affectation, but from an indifference to all dress. Having a retentive memory, he profited by his own reading, and by the conversation of others, who directed him also in the choice of books. As his finances were too low to make many purchases, he borrowed books from his friends, and was in the practice of making large extracts from such as he particularly liked, and sometimes even of copying out the whole book, of which several specimens were found among his papers, written in a stiff school-boy’s hand. As his industry was excessive, his advances in the acquisition of knowledge were rapid, and he was regarded as a prodigy by his school-fellows. His mother being a zealous Catholic, the son could not avoid mixing at times in the company of priests resident at Cork, who pointed out to him books of polemical divinity, of which he became a great reader, and for which he retained a strong bias during his lifetime. He was said at one time to have been destined for the priesthood, but for this report there is no authority. He, however, always continued a Catholic, and in the decline of life manifested rather a bigoted attachment to the religion of his early choice. For a short interval he had a little wavering in his belief of revealed religion in general; but a conversation with Mr. Edmund Burke put an end to this levity. A book which Mr. Burke lent him, and which settled his mind on this subject, was Bishop Butler’s Analogy; and, as a suitable reward, he has placed this Prelate in the group of divines, in his picture of Elysium.
About the age of seventeen he first attempted oil paintings; and between that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he produced several large ones, which decorated his father’s house, and represented subjects not often handled by young men; such as Æneas escaping with his family from the flames of Troy; Susanna and the Elders; Daniel in the Lion’s Den, &c. At this period, he also produced the picture which first drew him into public notice, launched him on an ampler theatre than his native town of Cork afforded, and, above all, gained him the acquaintance and patronage of Mr. Burke. This picture was founded on an old tradition of the landing of St. Patrick on the sea-coast of Cashel, and of the conversion and baptism of the king of that district by the patron saint of Ireland. The priest, in the act of baptizing his new convert, inadvertently strikes the spear of the crosier in the foot of the monarch. The holy father, absorbed in the duties of his office, does not perceive what he has done, and the king, without interrupting the ceremony, bears the pain with immoveable fortitude. This incident, together with the gestures and expressions of the attendants, certainly formed a good subject for an historical picture; and Mr. Barry’s manner of treating it was such as to insure him the applause and admiration of the connoisseurs of the metropolis of the sister kingdom, where it was exhibited in 1762 or 1763. Mr. Barry took this picture with him to Dublin; and afterwards going to the exhibition room, being delighted with the encomiums it received from the spectators, he could not refrain from making himself known as the painter. His pretensions were treated with great contempt by the company, and Barry burst into tears of anger and vexation. But the incredulity of his hearers was a compliment paid to the real or supposed excellence of his painting. It appears that a Dr. Sleigh, a physician of Cork, and a sensible and amiable man, was first instrumental in introducing young Barry to the notice of Mr. Burke. During their early acquaintance, having fallen into a dispute on the subject of taste, Barry quoted a passage in support of his opinion from the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, which had been just then published anonymously, and which Barry, in his youthful admiration of it, had, it seems, transcribed entire. Burke affected to treat this work as a theoretical romance, of no authority whatever, which threw Barry into such a rage in its defence, that Mr. Burke thought it necessary to appease him by owning himself to be the author. The scene ended in Barry’s running to embrace him, and showing him the copy of the work which he had been at the pains to transcribe. He passed his time in Dublin in reading, drawing, and society. While he resided here, an anecdote is preserved of him, which marks the character of the man. He had been enticed by his companions several times to carousings at a tavern, and one night, as he wandered home by himself, a thought struck him of the frivolity and viciousness of thus mis-spending his time: the fault, he imagined, lay in his money, and, therefore, without more ado, in order to avoid the morrow’s temptation, he threw the whole of his wealth, which perhaps amounted to no great sum, into the Liffey, and locked himself up at his favourite pursuits. After a residence of seven or eight months in Dublin, an opportunity offered of accompanying some part of Mr. Burke’s family to London, which he eagerly embraced. This took place some time in the year 1764, when he was twenty-three years of age, and with one of those advantages which do not always fall to the lot of young artists on their arrival in the British capital, that of being recommended to the acquaintance of the most eminent men in the profession by the persuasive eloquence of a man who, to genius in himself, added the rare and noble quality of encouraging it in others; this was Mr. Burke, who lost no time, not merely in making Barry known, but in procuring for him the first of all objects to an inexperienced and destitute young artist, employment. This employment was chiefly that of copying in oil drawings by Mr. Stewart, better known by the name of Athenian Stewart; and whether it suited the ambition of Barry or not, to be at this kind of labour, yet there can be no doubt that he profited by his connection with such a man as Stewart, and had full leisure to cast his eye about, and to improve by the general aspect of art and artists that occupied the period.
Mr. Burke and his other friends thinking it important that he should be introduced to a wider and nobler school of art than this country afforded, now came forward with the means necessary to accomplish this object; and in the latter end of 1765 Mr. Barry proceeded to the Continent, where he remained till the beginning of 1771, studying his art with an enthusiasm which seemed to augur the highest success, and making observations on the different chef d’œuvres of Italy with equal independence of judgment and nicety of discrimination. He was supported during this period by the friendly liberality of the Burke family (Edmund, William, and Richard), who allowed him forty pounds a-year for his necessary expenditure, besides occasional remittances for particular purposes. He proceeded first to Paris, then to Rome, where he remained upwards of three years, from thence to Florence and Bologna, and home through Venice. His letters to the Burkes, giving an account of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci, show a complete insight into the characteristic merits of their works, and would make us wonder (if the case were at all singular) how he could enter with such force, delicacy, and feeling, into excellencies of which he never transplanted an atom into his own works. He saw, felt, and wrote; his impressions were profound and refined, but the expression of them must be instantaneous, such as gave the results of them with a stroke of the pen, as they were received by a glance of the eye, and he could not wait for the slow process of the pencil for embodying his conceptions in the necessary details of his own art. It was his desire to make the ideas and language of painting co-instantaneous,—to express abstract results by abstract mechanical means (a thing impossible),—to stamp the idea in his mind at once upon the canvass, without knowledge of its parts, without labour, without patience, without a moment’s time or thought intervening between what he wished to do and its being done, that was perhaps the principal obstacle to his ever attaining a degree of excellence in his profession at all proportioned either to his ambition or his genius. It is probable, that, as his hand had not the patience to give the details of objects, his eye, from the same habit of mind, had not the power to analyze them. It is possible, however, to see the results without the same laborious process that is necessary to convey them; for the eye sees faster than the hand can move.
We suspect Mr. Barry did not succeed very well in copying the pictures he so well describes; because he appears to have copied but few, only one of Raphael, as far as we can find, and three from Titian, whom he justly considered as the model of colouring, and as more perfect in that department of the art than either Raphael or Michael Angelo were in theirs, expression and form, the highest excellence in which he conceives to have been possessed only by the ancients. In copying from the antique, however, he manifested the same aversion to labour, or to that kind of labour which, by showing us our defects, compels us to make exertions to remedy them. He made all his drawings from the antique, by means of a delineator, that is, a mechanical instrument, to save the trouble of acquiring a knowledge both of form and proportion. In this manner, equally gratifying to his indolence and his self-love, he is stated to have made numberless sketches of the antique statues, of all sizes, and in all directions, carefully noting down on his sketch-paper their several measurements and proportions.
The consequences are before us in his pictures; namely, that all those of his figures which he took from these memorandums are deficient in every thing but form, and that all the others are equally deficient in form and every thing else. If he did not employ his pencil properly, or enough, in copying from the models he saw, he employed his thoughts and his pen about them with indefatigable zeal and spirit. He talked well about them; he wrote well about them; he made researches into all the collateral branches of art and knowledge, sculpture, architecture, cameos, seals, and intaglios. There is a long letter of his, addressed to Mr. Burke, on the origin of the Gothic style of architecture, written, as it should seem, to convince his friend and patron of his industry in neglecting his proper business. Soon after his arrival at Rome, he became embroiled with the whole tribe of connoisseurs, painters, and patrons there, whether native or foreign, on subjects of virtù; and he continued in this state of hostility with those around him while he staid there, and, indeed, to the end of his life. One might be tempted to suppose that Barry chiefly studied his art as a subject to employ his dialectics upon. On this unfortunate disposition of his to wrangling and controversy, as it was likely to affect his progress in his art and his progress in life, he received some most judicious advice from Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Burke, his answers to which show an admirable self-ignorance. On his irritable denunciations of the practices and tricks of the Italian picture-dealers, Mr. Burke makes a reflection well deserving of attention. ‘In particular, you may be assured that the traffic in antiquity, and all the enthusiasm, folly, and fraud, which may be in it, never did, nor never can, hurt the merit of living artists. Quite the contrary, in my opinion: for I have ever observed, that, whatever it be that turns the minds of men to anything relative to the arts, even the most remotely so, brings artists more and more into credit and repute; and though, now and then, the mere broker and dealer in such things runs away with a great deal of profit, yet, in the end, ingenious men will find themselves gainers by the dispositions which are nourished and diffused in the world by such pursuits.’ Mr. Barry painted two pictures while abroad, his Adam and Eve and his Philoctetes. The first of these he sent home as a specimen of his progress in the art. It does not appear to have given much satisfaction. His Philoctetes he brought home with him. It is a most wretched, coarse, unclassical performance, the direct opposite of all that he thought it to be. During his stay at Rome, he made an excursion to Naples, and was highly delighted with the collections of art there. All the time he was abroad, Mr. Burke and his brothers not only were punctual in their remittances to him, but kept up a most friendly and cordial correspondence. On one occasion, owing to the delay of a letter, a bill which Barry had presented to a banker was dishonoured. This detained Barry for some time at the place where he was in very awkward circumstances, and he had thoughts of getting rid of his chagrin and of his prospects in life at once, by running away and turning friar. For some time previous to his return to England, Mr. Hamilton (afterwards Sir William) appears to have been almost the only person with whom he kept up any intimacy. It was on his return home through Milan that he witnessed, and has recorded with due reprobation, the destruction of Leonardo’s Last Supper, which two bungling artists were employed to paint over by order of one Count de Firmian, the secretary of state.
In the spring of 1771, Mr. Barry arrived in England, after an absence of five years. He soon after produced his picture of Venus, which has been compared to the Galatea of Raphael, the Venus of Titian, and the Venus of Medicis, without reason. Mr. Barry flattered himself that he had surpassed the famous statue of that name, by avoiding the appearance of maternity in it. There is an engraving of it by Mr. Valentine Green. In 1773, he exhibited his Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida, which was much praised by some critics of that day. His Death of General Wolfe was considered as a falling off from his great style of art, which consisted in painting Greek subjects, and it accordingly is said to ‘have obtained no praise.’ His fondness for Greek costume was assigned by his admirers as the cause of his reluctance to paint portraits; as if the coat was of more importance than the face. His fastidiousness, in this respect, and his frequent excuses, or blunt refusals, to go on with a portrait of Mr. Burke, which he had begun, caused a misunderstanding with that gentleman, which does not appear to have been ever entirely made up. The difference between them is said to have been widened by Burke’s growing intimacy with Sir Joshua, and by Barry’s feeling some little jealousy of the fame and fortune of his rival in an humbler walk of the art. He, about the same time, painted a pair of classical subjects, Mercury inventing the Lyre, and Narcissus looking at himself in the water, the last suggested to him by Mr. Burke. He also painted an historical picture of Chiron and Achilles, and another of the story of Stratonice, for which last the Duke of Richmond gave him a hundred guineas. In 1773, there was a plan in contemplation for our artists to decorate the inside of St. Paul’s with historical and sacred subjects; but this plan fell to the ground, from its not meeting with the concurrence of the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the no small mortification of Barry, who had fixed upon the subject he was to paint,—the rejection of Christ by the Jews when Pilate proposes his release. In 1775, he published An Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England, vindicating the capacity of the English for the fine arts, and tracing their slow progress hitherto to the Reformation; to political and civil dissensions; and, lastly, to the general turn of the public mind to mechanics, manufactures, and commerce. In the year 1774, shortly after the failure of the scheme of decorating St. Paul’s, a proposal was made, through Mr. Valentine Green, to the same artists, Reynolds, West, Cipriani, Barry, &c. for ornamenting the great room of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, in the Adelphi, with historical and allegorical paintings. This proposal was at the time rejected by the artists themselves; but, in 1777, Mr. Barry made an offer to paint the whole himself, on condition of being allowed the choice of his subjects, and being paid the expense of canvass, paints, and models, by the Society. This offer was accepted, and he finished the series of pictures at the end of seven years, instead of two, which he had proposed to himself, but with entire satisfaction to the members of the Society, for whom it was intended, and who conducted themselves to him with liberality throughout. They granted him two exhibitions, and at different periods voted him 50 guineas, their gold medal, and again 200 guineas, and a seat among them. Dr. Johnson remarked, when he saw the pictures, that, ‘whatever the hand had done, the head had done its part.’ There was an excellent anonymous criticism, supposed to be by Mr. Burke, published on them, in answer to some remarks put forth by Barry, in his descriptive catalogue, on the ideal style of art, and the necessity of size to grandeur. His notions on both these subjects are very ably controverted, and, indeed, they are the rock on which Barry’s genius split. It would be curious if Mr. Burke were the author of these strictures; for it is not improbable that Barry was led into the last error, here deprecated, by that author’s Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. The series consists of six pictures, showing the progress of human culture. The first represents Orpheus taming the savages by his lyre. The figure of Orpheus himself is more like a drunken bacchanal than an inspired poet or lawgiver. The only part of this picture which is valuable is the background, in one part of which a lion is seen ready to dart upon a family group milking near a cave, and, in another, a tyger is pursuing a horse. There is certainly a scope of thought and picturesque invention, in thus showing indirectly the protection which civilization extends, as it were, over both man and animals. The second picture is a Grecian harvest, which has nothing Grecian in it. But we cannot apply this censure to the third picture of the Olympic Games, some of the figures in which, and the principal group, are exceedingly graceful, classical, and finely conceived. This picture is the only proof Mr. Barry has left upon canvass that he was not utterly insensible to the beauties of the art. The figure of the young man on horseback really reminds the spectator of some of the Elgin marbles; and the outlines of the two youthful victors at the games, supporting their father on their shoulders, are excellent. The colouring is, however, as bald and wretched in this picture as the rest, and there is a great want of expression. The fourth picture is the triumph of commerce, with Dr. Burney swimming in the Thames, with his hair powdered, among naked sea-nymphs. The fifth, the Society of Arts, distributing their annual prizes. And the sixth represents Elysium. This last picture is a collection of caricatured portraits of celebrated individuals of all ages and nations, strangely jumbled together, with a huge allegorical figure of Retribution driving Heresy, Vice, and Atheism, into the infernal regions. The moral design of all these pictures is much better explained in the catalogue than on the canvass; and the artist has added none of the graces of the pencil to it in any of them, with the exception above made. Mr. Barry appears, however, to have rested his pretensions to fame as an artist on this work, for he did little afterwards but paltry engravings from himself, and the enormous and totally worthless picture of Pandora in the assembly of the gods. His self-denial, frugality, and fortitude, in the prosecution of his work at the Adelphi, cannot be too much applauded. He has been heard to say, that at the time of his undertaking it, he had only 16s. in his pocket; and that he had often been obliged, after painting all day, to sit up at night to sketch or engrave some design for the printsellers, which was to supply him with his next day’s subsistence. In this manner he did his prints of Job, dedicated to Mr. Burke, of the birth of Venus, Polemon, Head of Chatham, King Lear, from the picture painted for the Shakespear gallery, &c. His prints are caricatures even of his pictures: they seem engraved on rotten wood.
Soon after Mr. Barry’s return from the Continent, he was chosen a member of the Royal Academy; and in 1782, was appointed professor of painting, in the room of Mr. Penny, with a salary of £30 a-year. The lectures which he delivered from the chair were full of strong sense, and strong advice, both to the students and academicians. Among other things, he insisted much on the necessity of purchasing a collection of pictures by the best masters as models for the students, and proposed several of those in the Orleans collection. This recommendation was not relished by the academicians, who, perhaps, thought their own pictures the best models for their several pupils. Bickerings, jealousies, and quarrels arose, and at length reached such a height, that, in 1799, Mr. Barry was expelled from the academy, soon after the appearance of his Letter to the Dilettanti Society; a very amusing, but eccentric publication, full of the highest enthusiasm for his art, and the lowest contempt for the living professors of it. In 1800, he undertook a design or drawing to celebrate the union of the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The profits of the two exhibitions of the Adelphi pictures are said to have amounted to above £500. Lord Romney presented him with 100 guineas for his portrait, which had been copied into one of the pictures, and he had twenty guineas for a head of Mr. Hooper. He probably received other sums for portraits introduced into the work. By extreme frugality he contrived, not only to live, but to save money. His house was twice robbed of sums which he kept by him; one of the times (in 1794) of upwards of £100; a loss which was made up by the munificence of Lord Radnor, and by that of his friends, the Hollis’s. After the loss of his salary, a subscription was set on foot by the Earl of Buchan to relieve him from his difficulties, and to settle him in a larger house to finish his picture of Pandora. The subscription amounted to £1000, with which an annuity was bought; but of this he was prevented from enjoying the benefit; for, on the 6th of February 1806, he was seized with a pleuritic fever, and as he neglected medical assistance at first, it was afterwards of no use. After lingering on for a fortnight in considerable pain, but without losing his fortitude of mind, he died on the 22d of the same month. On the 13th of March, the body was taken to the great room of the Society of Arts, and was thence attended, the following day, by a numerous and respectable train of his friends to the cathedral of St. Paul’s, where it was deposited.