Nottingham Subscription Library
From 1816 onwards Barber's client at St.Peter's Church, Rev Mr Robert White Almond and others were setting up the Nottingham Subscription Library (“NSL”), and Barber became a member of it, if not in 1816, then by 1820 or 1822.
The Library's historian seems to confuse our Thomas and his son Tom with Thomas Barber of Lamb Close House, Greasley.
Neal Priestland compiled an astonishingly detailed “database” of the people connected with the Library. At the period of its foundation c.1816 and move to Bromley House c.1822 there were three Thomas Barbers involved with it, and it would be necessary to trawl right through the archives to be sure as to which one any particular piece of information refers to. However, Lamb Close House was the address of the Greasley Barbers, who appear unconnected with the painters.
A leader of the Nottingham non-conformists was Richard Alliott, who had been at Castle Gate since the 1790s. From 1816 he was a member of the NSL, as was Jonathan Dunn, a bookseller amongst other things ......
Bromley House records. Jonathan Dunn had been the publisher, if not indeed author, of the work published in 1807 which stated that the Moravians prayed at Brewhouse Yard. Bromley House records suggest that in 1822 Mr Dunn gave the Library a portrait of the lawyer and [later] MP and Lord Thomas Denman, which the Library no longer had in 1916. This portrait may well have been by Thomas Barber; so much is suggested in respect of an engraving of it, and it looks very much in the Barber style (see Nat. Portrait Gallery D1738).
...... and several others whom Barber no doubt knew very well. The Library formed itself into a formal company in 1822 and bought a fine house in the centre of the city, which it still occupies (Bromley House).
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| Bromley House 1 October 2020 |
The list of names of members then includes Messrs Alliott, Almond, Barber, Dunn, and a name I have not yet mentioned, Dr John Storer.
Of the three Barbers who were members in 1822 at the time Bromley House was purchased (Bromley House title deeds, schedule to the 5000 year demise), “Thomas Barber Esq., Eastwood” is the one from the Greasley family, “Mr Alderman Barber” is John Houseman Barber the future Mayor of Nottingham, and “Mr Thomas Barber” is the portrait painter.
The Bromley House records show that in about 1819 a portrait of Dr Storer, then retiring as the Library's first President, was painted by Thomas Barber junior. He was admitted to membership in lieu of payment for the portrait, but after his son died Thomas Barber senior refused to pay alleged arrears, saying that the picture was worth fifty guineas. It was a full length picture, and hung on the stairs for many years. The Library does not have it today, and was said to have been stolen.
Russell, History of the NSL, pp.39-41. It was on the stairs in 1916. In 1929 when it was taken down for cleaning and was said to have been returned (Nottm Journal 17 Jan. and 12 February 1929), inaccurate information was taken from a publication called “Highways and Byways.” The story of it being stolen comes from a short “biography” of Dr Storer by Terry Fry for the Thoroton Society's Newsletter in [date not known]. Neal Priestland's notes, up-to-date about 2007, don't seem to mention the theft. I joined the Library in 2016 and don't recall seeing the picture there myself.
The portrait of R.W. Almond, who succeeded Storer as the second President and which Bromley House Library still has, must I feel surely be the work not of Lawrence but of Thomas Barber, and I might suggest that it was done in the 1820s when Almond was around forty. He had been the Rector of St.Peter's since 1814 having earlier been curate at Bulwell and Basford.
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| Robert White Almond (by permission of Bromley House Library) |
My own notes on R.W.Almond, the sources for which include an article “R.W.Almond,” by J.Bramley, in Thoroton Society Transactions vol. LX (1956) pp.44-49. The Clergy Database does not mention the curacy. The Rector of Bulwell and Basford at that time was Robert Stanser, who as far back as 1771 had succeeded my own relative Rev. Thomas Beaumont (not the one who was painted by Barber).
Family losses – change of address in Derby
Barber's teenage daughter Anne, the subject of a nice portrait by her father.....
Illustrated in Mitford-Barberton's book with some other family pictures.
....... very sadly died about Christmas 1819 after the coach in which she was travelling was caught all night in a snow storm between Nottingham and Derby.
Nottingham Review, 31 December 1819.
Young Tom Barber also died, at Standard Hill in 1824.
….. in his 27th year, universally respected by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance, Mr Thomas Barber, artist, of Standard-hill, Nottingham, eldest son of Mr Barber, the eminent portrait painter, of this town; his illness was short, but very severe (Derby Mercury 19 May 1824)…..on Friday last, at his father's house, Standard-hill, Nottingham, of typhus fever, Mr Thomas Barber, portrait painter (Stamford Mercury 21 May 1824).
Mrs Mary Barber (nee Atherstone) died the following year.
At Derby on 25 Sept. 1825 (Mitford-Barberton p.19). Derby Mercury 28 Sep. 1825 reported the recent death of “Mrs Barber, the wife of Mr Barber, an eminent portrait-painter, in the Friar-gate, in this town.”
Thomas Barber is said to have arranged to have a “family vault” at the Brookside Chapel in Derby, in which they were all buried.
Mitford-Barberton p.27. He said that all trace of it had disappeared. I don't know Derby but it seems to me the site was no more than a hundred yards or so from where Barber moved to at Greenhill, Brookside being the former name of Victoria Street. The meetings were originally held in Cross Street (now Macklin Street).
After this Barber's (rented) house in Friar-gate was offered for sale,
Derby Mercury 9 and 16 Nov. 1825.
.... and he moved to Greenhill-Lane (or -Street) where he lived and no doubt worked for several years.
Mitford-Barberton p.27. Glover's Directory for Derby (prepared say 1827-1828) and published in 1829).
In 1826 Barber's son Joseph, then aged 22, a music teacher, left Derby and went to America. But he returned the next year eager to marry the girl he had left behind, whose name was Violetta Newton. She was hesitant, but after Thomas Barber intervened the marriage went ahead in May 1827 and a couple of weeks later Joseph sailed back to New York with his bride. Much detail of this is known only from a letter printed in Mitford-Barberton's book, written by Hugh Barber, it is said there from “Ever Hill,” which seems certain to be a misreading of Green Hill.
Mitford-Barberton pp.33-35 for the letter. Sailings and marriage details from the FSS. Thomas Barber himself witnessed the marriage, giving us an example of his signature!
Greenhill was the name of a district of rising ground lying broadly to the west and southwest of St.Peter's Church, Derby. In the early nineteenth century it was practically bordering on countryside.
See Derby City Council's 2013 Character Appraisal and Management Plan for the Green Lane and St.Peter's Conservation area, passim. Plate 9 is an 1852 map showing how Green Hill [Street] may have joined into [the narrower, offset] St Peter's Churchyard in Barber's day.
Hugh Barber noted in the 1827 letter that Father had recently finished “the Marquis,” and I wonder if this refers to a portrait of the Duke of Wellington.
Over the next few years, three more of Barber's sons got married. First in 1828 Henry married a cousin called Hannah Atherstone, then in 1830 Hugh (then living at Twickenham) married Derby girl Ann Hoare
(whose sister the year before had married the artist John Rawson Walker)
.... and in August 1831 Alfred married Elizabeth Gill.
Alfred had established himself as a printer and/or bookseller after c.1827 and by c.1831 but exactly where is not yet clear to me. He must have had access to his father's pictures and he was certainly interested in the developing technologies for reproducing images. More on him below.
As will be seen below, Thomas Barber remarried in July 1831. A house in Green Lane, Derby that “Thomas Barber Esq” had lately occupied, was then available for re-letting.
Derby Mercury 26 October 1831.
Although the new Mrs Barber had several children, I do wonder if there was now something of a honeymoon period when Mr & Mrs Barber had the opportunity to travel a little and look at landscapes.
........ to be continued
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