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Letter from JAMES BARRY to DUKE OF RICHMOND, written 16 June 1788 , at London

Source: Fryer, Works of Barry, i. 274-75.

A line of asterisks separates the second paragraph from the first in Fryer's text, which suggests a passage has been omitted.

Charles Lennox (1735-1806), 3rd Duke of Richmond, [go] founder member and a Vice-President of the Society of Arts, a patron of the arts and member of the Dilettanti Society. Richmond House in Whitehall had its own art gallery with classical sculptures in the garden. These were open to interested artists and Richmond started a drawing school there under the painter G.B.Cipriani and the sculptor J. Wilton in 1758 (Lionel Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1914), p. 58 and James Fenton, School of Genius: A History of the Royal Academy of Arts (London, 2006), p. 97).

Richmond had commissioned Barry to paint Antiochus and Stratonice (See Barry to Richmond, 29 August and 14 October 1773).

Richmond served as Minister of Ordnance in the Administration of William Pitt (1759-1806).

The date of the letter is established by Richmond's reply on 19 June in which he acknowledges 'your letter of the 16th instant'.

My Lord,

Your Grace's goodness and indulgence to me, which I have long since experienced, encourage me at present to trespass upon your attention for a few lines. About two months ago, upon the death of Mr. Stuart,1 who succeeded Hogarth in the place of Sergeant painter,2 I mentioned to Mr. Townley3 my wishes to obtain that, or some such place, in order to enable me to carry on at my own expense some work of art for the public, with more convenience and ease to myself than I experienced in that work at the Adelphi. Mr. Townley immediately wrote to Mr.Agar4 and others of his friends, through whose means the matter was mentioned to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,5 the Lord Chancellor,6 and other personages; but as upon enquiry the place was found to produce no more than eighteen pounds a year, I begged Mr. Agar to let it drop. At present I am informed that the death of Mr. Benjamin Wilson might leave some vacancy of about one hundred and fifty pounds a year in your Grace's department of the ordnance,7 which, if I should be thought worthy of filling, would give full scope to my views upon the art and upon the public. At present I am at work upon one of the subjects from ShakspeareShakespeare for Alderman Boydell;8 but as these subjects afford more of the Gothic than of the heroic, are full of barbarisms and anachronisms of every kind, and come as much within the compass of the grossest ignorance, as of the most extensive knowledge, I shall get to something of more importance and more worthy of the eighteenth century, whenever it is in my power to create an opportunity. I have gone through a scene of great labour since I had the honour of seeing your Grace. I have finished and read those lectures upon the theory of the art, which as professor I am annually to deliver in the Royal Academy,9 and I have finished the prints of the work at the Adelphi,10 all but the picture of the Society.11

Trusting that your Grace's goodness and indulgence will excuse this liberty I have taken, I have the honour to be, with the sincerest respect, your Grace's much obliged and affectionate humble servant,

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1 ^
Stuart] James Stuart (1713-88), sometimes spelt Stewart, under whom Barry worked when he first went to London in 1763; surveyor of Greenwich Hospital and painter to the Society of Dilettanti; in the text Fryer adds in parenthesis '(Athenian Stuart)', the name by which he was known.

2 ^
Sergeant painter] William Hogarth (1697-1764), English painter and engraver, famous for his satirical pictures that criticised moral and social abuses. Hogarth was appointed Sergeant painter in 1757, a position in the gift of the monarch, to be available to paint portraits and other art work. Stuart, appointed after Hogarth's death, was the last to hold the post.

3 ^
Townley]

Charles Townley (1737-1805), [img] born into a Catholic family and educated abroad, miniaturist painter and engraver, he became a celebrated art collector and antiquarian; friend of the painter and dealer Gavin Hamilton in Rome. Barry often refers to his art collection in his house in Westminster which was acquired by the British Museum on his death. Townley was elected a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1786 (Lionel Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1914), p. 275).

Townley had praised Barry's paintings in the Adelphi: 'they were certainly composed on the principle of the great chef d'oeuvres of painting, which were so much approved by the most intelligent and elevated minds amongst the ancients, and that they would no doubt do the same credit to their ingenious author' (cited in Fryer, Works of Barry, i. 271).

4 ^
Agar] Welbore Ellis Agar (d. 1805), art collector and commissioner of customs.

5 ^
Prince of Wales] George Augustus Frederick (1762-1830), son of George III, Prince of Wales.

6 ^
Lord Chancellor] Edward Thurlow (1731-1806), 1st Baron Thurlow, Lord Chancellor from 1778 to 1792.

7 ^
of the ordnance] Benjamin Wilson (1721-88), English portrait painter and scientist, elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1751; he was painter to the Board of Ordnance.

8 ^
Boydell] Josiah Boydell (1752-1817), English painter, engraver and publisher, established his Shakespeare Gallery which displayed illustrations of scenes from the plays of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Barry, one of the first artists to be approached by Boydell, contributed King Lear weeping over the Body of Cordelia (1786-87) [img], exhibited when the Gallery opened on 4 May 1789, and might have started work on Iachimo emerging from the Chest in Imogen's Chamber(c.1788-92), a scene from Shakespeare'sCymbeline. See Pressly, Life and Art, pp. 143-47.

9 ^
Royal Academy] Barry had been elected Professor of Painting on 4 March 1782: the laws of the Academy governing the Professor of Painting included the following article: “XII. There shall be a Professor of Painting, who shall read Annually Six Lectures, calculated to Instruct the Students in the Principles of Composition, to form their Taste of Design and Colouring, to strengthen their Judgement, to point out to them the Beauties and Imperfections of celebrated Works of Art, and the particular Excellences or Defects of great masters, and, finally to lead them into the Readiest and most efficacious Paths of study; his SallarySalary shall be Thirty Pounds a Year; and he shall continue in Office during the King's Pleasure.”

10 ^
at the Adelphi] When Barry's six paintings, The Progress of Human Culture, were first exhibited in the Great Room of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi in 1783, Barry had issued Proposals for Publishing by Subscription, Six Engraved Prints, from the above-mentioned Series of Six Pictures upon the Subject of Human Culture (1783); the price was to be six guineas a set. The engravings were not published until 1792. Barry, who had started working as an engraver in 1776, did the work himself.

11 ^
of the Society] Fryer gives a line of asterisks here to indicate either damage to or his omission of a portion of the letter.