Art career - Nottingham, London, Nottingham, Derby
There are signs that Thomas Barber's career as a portrait-painter started shortly before 1800 and was a development from a more mundane kind of painting, for a Thomas Barber was described as a painter in Nottingham in two Directories of the 1790s, one of which gives his address as Peter's Churchyard. This may mean a house-painter.
Universal British Directory (page 50 of, I think, the fourth volume, address is not given). Willoughby, 1799 Nottingham Directory p.92 with address. St Peter's Churchyard was where his mother lived. Unfortunately it has not been possible, yet, to access the Nottingham papers in which he might have advertised at this early period.
Indeed within thirty years of Barber's death, the art writer Samuel Redgrave said of Barber that “he was apprenticed to a house painter in Nottingham, and showing signs of superior ability, he came to London to study, and was assisted to receive some instruction from Sir Thomas Lawrence.”
Samuel Redgrave, (1874) [First Edition of] A Dictionary of Artists of the English School.
I am tempted to accept this unreferenced note, and my suggestion is that Barber's connexion with Lawrence was taking place rather later than might be supposed, perhaps around 1800 or later.
However Lawrence was not knighted until April 1815 (London Gazette 22 April 1815 p.747).
I believe that the death of portrait painter Elias Needham in 1800 may have opened up a market for Barber. Or at least removed a local competitor.
Though he seems to have drawn or painted some landscapes early in his career ...
Mitford-Barberton at page 28 refers to pencil landscape sketches dated 1803 and 1804
...... Barber's forte was very clearly portraits. Redgrave implied that someone paid or sponsored him to go to London, this I think is the meaning of “assisted.” It remains unclear whether this period in London was continuous or intermittent. I would think Barber went back and forth. It is said that demand for replicas of Lawrence's paintings was such that even before 1800 he may have taken on studio assistants, and perhaps that is the kind of function that Thomas Barber may have fulfilled.
I think as Barber was only two years younger than Lawrence he is not likely to have been his “apprentice” as was the case say with Thomas Hargreaves in 1795 (Williams, Life & Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence (1831) vol. 1 p.329). Someone would have had to pay if it were a formal apprenticeship, such an arrangement being I think unusual in the case of a man who was already married. On the other hand someone such as his father-in-law Hugh Atherstone or other people he knew surely would have had contacts in London who might have helped Thomas Barber in various ways to advance his career.
The early pictures?
A very early one, perhaps, was of Thomas Boothby Parkyns, of Bunny near Nottingham, who was created Lord Rancliffe in the Irish Peerage in 1795 and died in 1800. It was suggested in 1899 that this was a Barber picture (1899 Catalogue).
Another early picture by Barber would seem to be of Henry Kirke White. There are or were several of these, and if Barber painted one from life it would necessarily be no later than 1806, when White died. It might be an original from which many others were copied. Others who know far more than I do have written about Henry Kirke White.
See J.T. Godfrey & J.Ward, Homes & Haunts... pp. 240ff. The Bromley House Library tradition is that they have one (given to them in the 1820s by Neville White) which is a copy by Tom Barber of one by his father, and it may be that that original is the one in Nottingham Castle Museum.
Barber's drawing of a Nottingham mill or manufactory ablaze during the night of 28 November 1802 was said to be the subject of a fine engraving.
Blackner, Nottingham (1815) p.248.
Barber may have painted portraits of both Daniel Parker Coke, and the slave-trader Joseph Birch. These two fought the evidently bitterly disputed Nottingham Parliamentary elections of 1802 and 1803. Engravings of portraits – but by whom? - of both candidates were, or were intended to be, published at the time.
History of Parliament (online). Blackner, Nottingham. p.301. Birch had been elected in 1802 but in March 1803 the result was declared void. See “The Paper War carried on at the Nottingham Election,” 1803. Nottingham, 1803, printed by W & M Turner. George Coldham, the Town Clerk who Barber also painted, is nick-named Frigid-thighs the Scribe in “The Book of Chances,” an anti-Birch account of the events, written in mock-biblical style and emphasising that Birch was a slave-trader. One edition of “The Paper War” states at the end that engravings of Mr Coke and Mr Birch are to be published in a few days time. Another sets down a list of the burgesses and freeholders who voted, and who they voted for. There were two seats for Nottingham, this was an election for just one of them. The other was held by Sir John Borlase Warren at this date.
In her thesis on Nottingham artists Heather Williams made reference to the apparent lack of interest in art at Nottingham during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The artist Richard Bonington tried to establish an art shop but was obliged to close it in February 1807 (Williams cites Nottm Journal 28 February 1807) and indeed a few years later Messrs Moseley and Tunnicliff were to close their “Repository” (of arts, paintings, fancy goods is meant) in St.James's Street (NJ 10 August 1811). They were to continue their business in Derby as carvers, gilders, jewellers and silversmiths and I wonder to what extent those events may have conditioned Barber's own thinking about moving there.
Royal Academy
Barber exhibited pictures in many of the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibitions in London between 1810 and 1817. The artist is identified as “of Nottingham” in the index to the catalogue for most of those years, so I am confident that is he. In 1813 the index gives his address as 25 Clipstone Street, Fitzroy Square, and (assuming this to be the same man) this tells us that he took lodgings in town. He re-appears in the catalogues as “of Derby” in 1819 and intermittently between 1824 and 1829.
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Catalogues for those years. In the 1817 edition of “Annals of the Fine Arts” “Barber, T. Nottingham” is listed as a portrait specialist in a listing of the “principal artists residing or practising in the Metropolis.”
The portrait he exhibited in 1819 was of the famous actress Sarah Siddons, then already in her sixties, two of whose daughters are said to have had relationships with Thomas Lawrence. Here perhaps is a glimpse into Barber's time in London. It strikes me that whilst any number of Barber's sitters must have visited London, most of them could have sat for him in Nottingham or Derby. Mrs Siddons is an instance where I know of no Midlands connexion.
In 1829 Barber was exhibiting a portrait of the prominent Moravian clergyman Christian Ignatius LaTrobe.
C.I. LaTrobe was born at Fulneck in 1758 and worked at Bedford, Chelsea, London, and no doubt elsewhere. When he died, in 1836, he was buried at a Moravian settlement at Fairfield (on the east side of Manchester). LaTrobe may have introduced Barber to his second wife (below). My very limited research about the Moravians has revealed nothing if not a web of inter-marriages.
Nottingham work
In summer 1814 there had been great celebrations of the defeat (as it was then believed) of Napoleon Bonaparte. People hung illuminated pictures from their houses all around Nottingham, and several of these were by “Mr Barber.”
This is all detailed in Nottingham Gazette..., 10 June 1814. The joy was premature for Napoleon escaped from Elba and events then led on to Waterloo the next year. I think that the pictures were painted on white cotton sheets or large pieces of paper, hung outside the windows, and illuminated from within the house. As it was June, this must have been quite late in the evening to be effective.
But Barber seems to have moved to Derby about that time, for although his own house on Standard Hill was one of those decorated that summer (showing Peace, sitting on a cloud, pointing towards France) his youngest child Frederick was baptised in Derby just before Christmas that year.
Frederick Barber was born 20 May 1814 and baptised 8 Dec 1814 at Brookside Independent chapel, Derby, parents being named in the record as Thomas and Mary (from Family Search site).
Thomas Barber was described as “meritorious” and a “clever local artist [who] was extensively employed by the noble lords” [Middleton], in the context of several pictures which were hanging at Wollaton Hall.
Rambles round Nottingham, vol. 1, 1856.
Round about 1815 might be the date of Barber's portraits of Thomas Beaumont, clergyman of East Bridgford, near Nottingham, and his wife Charlotte
(with acknowledgments and thanks to the owner of these two)
..... and also perhaps the same sort of date, of Rev J.T. Becher of Southwell
Image from Wikepedia. See this blog, 30 January 2019. Portrait now belongs to Southwell Minster.
“Barber, Thomas, portrait-painter, Standard-hill” is listed in the 1815 Nottingham Directory published by Sutton & Son. Such publications are apt to give information a year or so behind. But the Nottingham house was not given up when Barber moved to Derby. Perhaps it was a base for Thomas Barber junior, now about eighteen years old, who was starting to develop his own career as a painter.
Nor did Barber senior desert Nottingham entirely, for his work on the altar-piece in St Peter's church, for which the (then newly-appointed) Rector R.W. Almond paid nearly all of the £50 price, has been dated to about 1815.
By Peter Hoare, in an article on the claves.nottinghamchurches website (Claves Regni). This article must date from the 1990s. Barber also painted two portraits of R.W.Almond. One of these is at Bromley House Library. The other may still be in the church. What Barber painted as the altar-piece, depicting Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, is today the ceiling of the west entrance to the church, at the bottom of the tower.
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| The Agony in the Garden (of Gethsemane) St.Peter's Church, Nottingham by permission of the Rector Rev. C.Harrison |
Indeed I would not be surprised if the Barber house is what was referred to as the “Chapel of the United Brethren, on Standard Hill, Nottingham” where sermons were to be preached.
Nottingham Gazette…..10 September 1813.. See Holland Walker, as cited above.
I have not heard of any Moravian chapel as such in Nottingham, so perhaps meetings took place in a private house as they had earlier at Brewhouse Yard.
I think it is significant that the land sold off from the Castle estate for development was like Brewhouse Yard, “extra-parochial.”
Premises at Standard Hill were the location an exhibition of painting by Thomas Barber (father or son), by a certain B. Saunders, and by John Rawson Walker, and Standard Hill was also the address or studio of the latter in 1822. Nottingham-born artist J. R. Walker was a close contemporary of Thomas Barber junior.
Williams, Thesis p.449; citing eg Nottingham Journal 6 Jan. 1821.
Derby work
In early 1818 “Mr Barber, Portrait Painter,” respectfully advertised that he had moved his residence from Nottingham to Derby, where he gave his address as Friar Gate and added that specimens may be seen in his exhibition room.
Staffordshire Advertiser 7 Feb. 1818.
Certainly during this period Barber painted a number of portraits of local gentry, aristocracy and public figures. Mr Mitford-Barberton wrote that Barber was twice offered a knighthood, and turned it down.
Mitford-Barberton, p.20…. “…….preferring the more rural existence… to the honours offered him in London.” And from page 27:- “Barber’s modesty alone was the effectual bar to his obtaining the rank of Academician. To qualify for admission to the Royal Academy he would have had to reside in London, but not even the glittering prospect of one day succeeding his tutor Lawrence in the Presidency could tempt him from retirement in his Midland home.” This is word for word from the article in the Nottingham Journal of 24 February 1893, which I will refer to below!
The idea that Barber disliked society does not really stack up, when it was his bread and butter. His business model was to offer an almost London-quality product without needing to ask a London price. As such, he was better off in Derby and Nottingham.
One of the best summaries is from Timothy Langston Fine Art/Antiques - “Thomas Barber was a Nottingham based portrait painter who showed early enough promise to study in London and assist Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose influence is clear. Given his ability, he founded a successful practice, and exhibited steadily in London at the Royal Academy from 1810 until 1829. During the Regency he moved for a time to Derby thus offering comfortable families in the Midlands and North of England an elegant portrait style, in convenient surroundings, at a fraction of the cost of London painters...” This is in the context of Barber's portrait of Sempronius Stretton.
The pictures from that period include one of two young boys called Bateman, of Hartington in Derbyshire. Some writers have assumed that they were the family of the second Mrs Barber, thus implying that her first husband William Bateman, was a member of Derbyshire high society. He was in fact a Yorkshireman, and (as will be seen) a Moravian schoolmaster.
Barber certainly paid professional visits elsewhere, for example to Sheffield in about August 1824 when he painted James Montgomery, the Fulneck-educated poet and writer.
The price, raised by subscription, was 150 guineas, and it was a full length portrait, the work being done at the Tontine Hotel and taking about seven days to do (John Holland, Memoirs ….. James Montgomery, vol. 4 (1855), p.75).
Indeed he was sometimes working further afield. In 1819 “Mr Barber, Portrait Painter” advised the nobility and gentry of Hull that he would be happy to attend to their commands at No.55 Whitefriar-gate, in that town.
“Next door to the Bank” (Hull Packet 27 April 1819). I don't think he meant the Hull office of Nottingham-based Smiths Bank, which moved to that street in 1829 (Leighton-Boyce, Smiths the Bankers, p.189). Nevertheless the principal directors of Smiths may well have been amongst Barber's clients. Apart from those Smiths listed in my Table, the Smith Family portraits booklet includes two or three ascribed “Circle of Lawrence.” Furthermore Rev. Thomas Beaumont, one of Barber's sitters, was closely related to the banker Smiths.
But in general the relative infrequency of his advertisements seems to point to him not being short of work.
Another picture of the Derby period apparently is the one of Cornelius Smelt, Lt-Governor of the Isle of Man, and brother of the Rector of Gedling just outside Nottingham. Barber is said to have charged £52 for this portrait.
An article in Wikipedia says this picture was commissioned by subscription in 1826 and cites Journal of Manx Museum 1 Dec. 1937, page 9. The brother of Col Elliott, who was also the subject of a painting by Barber, lived at Gedling House, being the brother-in-law of Rev. Thomas Beaumont.
Barber never signed or dated his pictures, apparently.
Williams, Thesis p.263.
...... to be continued
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