Mountain road

item details

NameMountain road

ProductionThomas Barker; attributed; circa 1786; England

Classificationwatercolours, works on paper

Materialswatercolour

Materials Summarywatercolour

DimensionsImage: 250 (height), 350 (length)

Registration Number1957-0009-13

Credit lineGift of Archdeacon F.H.D. Smythe, 1957

Overview

Thomas Barker (1769-1847) was an English figure and landscape painter born at Trosnant in Monmouthshire into a family of artists that included his father, Benjamin Barker the Elder (1729-1803), and his two brothers, Benjamin (1776-1838) and Joseph (1782-1809). The family moved to Bath around 1783, where Thomas gained the patronage of the wealthy coach-builder Charles Spackman (1749-1822), who sponsored him to pursue his artistic talents and ambitions. This included an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy, which was cut short in 1793 when Spackman was faced with financial difficulties. After several years exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the British Institution in London, Barker eventually constructed his own gallery from which to sell his works, which opened in Bath in 1805.

Barker, who never attended art school, primarily developed his skills by copying works of the Old Masters, particularly the landscapes of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), to the point where many of his works have been misattributed to Gainsborough over the years.¹ One of his most successful subjects, the woodman, as in The Woodman and His Dog, c.1790 (now at Torfaen Museum), was also based on Gainsborough’s work.

Other than working in oils and watercolour, Barker was also one of the first British artists to use lithography. His Rustic figures after nature (1813) was the first series of lithographs published by a British single artist and was followed by English Landscape Scenery (1824).

Mountain road is an early example of his landscapes showing tired or lone figures wandering along a road amidst trees or rocky facades, inspired by Gainsborough’s gypsy scenes. The destination of the figure here, who is warmly wrapped up and equipped with a packsack and walking stick, is unknown. However, they are slowly moving out of the shadows of the darker area of the landscape on the left towards the brighter-lit right-hand side, with unseen possibilities waiting over the hill at the centre of the composition.

¹ ‘Britain’s Lost Masterpieces - Series 4: 2. Birmingham,’ aired November 2019 on BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b1gs (date of access 04/07/2023)