GEORGE BARRET Jr., O.W.S. (1767-1842)

TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL IN AN ARCADIAN LANDSCAPE
Watercolour with gum arabic on paper
75 x 108 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
Capt. Edward George Spencer-Churchill, M.C. (1876–1964);
The Northwick Park Collection, the Property of the Late Captain E. G. Spencer-Churchill, M.C., Christie's, London, 25.05.1965, lot  148 ('George Barrett R.A., A Lake Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, 29 x 43 in);
Private collection, U.K.
 
 
 
 
 
 
This exceptionally large-scale piece by Barret is undoubtedly one of his most accomplished and complex paintings in watercolour. The subject would have appealed to Barret as a typically Claudian one (the Prado's version of Tobias... had been reproduced in Earlom's Liber Veritatis); though our painting may also depict Hagar and the Angel, with Claude's painting of that scene once in the collection of Sir George Beaumont (and now in the National Gallery, London). Barret's father had painted a version of Tobias and the Angel in oils, with that work owned by the influential collector and draughtsman Dr Thomas Monro. The younger Barret also produced two very well-received watercolours directly after Claude, published in Engravings from Pictures in the National Gallery, namely The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba and The Annunciation, earning the remarkable sum of just over fifty guineas for both works. (1)
 
Such was Barret's appreciation of Claude that, in his treatise for students of watercolour painting, he instructed them: 'I will now conclude with advising the student to embrace every opportunity of studying the works of some painter, the most eminent for good colouring; and if he can have access to those of Claude, they will be the best (at least of the old masters) at first, as they are not only beautifully clear and chaste, but retain more of their original purity of colour than many others.' (2)
 
 
 
George Barret Jr. was the son of the renowned Irish-born founder member of the Royal Academy. He studied first under his father, who died when he was only 17, and his earliest works show his indebtedness to Sr.'s landscape oils. He quickly established a reputation for his watercolours however and began to paint primarily in this medium and on a small scale, although some of his best-known works are oils in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, several of them comparatively large. 
 
Like his father, George Jr. largely focused on landscape painting. He was working at a time when such works were gaining greater popularity as a subject in Britain, in particular those of Romantic and Continental subjects. Perhaps in part because of his father's ineptitude with money (he had died bankrupt), George accommodated this fashion to the point that Ruskin rather unfairly accused him of repetitiveness. In spite of the critic's remarks, when he was at his best, the artist was not just commercially minded, but was carrying on the grand tradition of classical landscape painting in the distinctly British field of watercolours: "George Barret numbers among the most influential draftsmen of his generation. In his idyllic landscape watercolours, Barret sought to replicate the golden tones of varnished oil paintings by Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin." (2)
 
Barret would often sketch compulsively at sunrise and sunset, hoping to record the minutiae of these times' effects on the sky and sun. The present view, with its allusion to the classical in background edifices, an atmosphere suffused with a warmth and distinctive use of gum arabic fixative that lends a glossy sheen to the foliage, is absolutely typical of Barret's imagined landscapes.