Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

Barret, born in Dublin’s Liberties, rose to be one of the most successful landscape painters in eighteenth-century London, and a founding member of the Royal Academy. Here by looking at nature afresh he moves beyond the classical tradition of followers of Claude like Richard Wilson and shows himself a proto-Romantic and, indeed, an important precursor of Turner. This is most apparent in the swirling vortex of light almost entirely surrounded by cloud, a compositional device (with pronounced symbolic charge) that Turner in his late period – many decades later – would take further. Here Barret stands as a pioneer of European landscape art. This aspect of Barret’s practice was astutely commented on by his friend Edmund Burke. Burke writes how the artist: ‘presents you with such a glorious assemblage, as I have sometimes seen among high mountains rising into unusual agreeable appearances while the early beams of the sun sport themselves ... through the vast arcades and sometimes glances on a great lake whose ascending vapours spread themselves like a veil over the distance’. Burke could have been specifically thinking of the present work in which ‘the early beams of the sun’ are individually visible. Writing of the National Gallery of Ireland replica Brendan Rooney notes how it is a ‘profoundly atmospheric painting, the apparent serenity of the river and relaxed activity of the figures upon it are countered by a sunburst that breaks though the trees to the left and the huge, ominous arc of cloud that glowers over the scene’. As Dr Rooney notes, the composition ‘owes a considera- ble debt to the artist’s experience working in the Dargle Valley’, in county Wicklow. Until recent research made the obvious link with the NGI work, and, indeed, the engrav- ing, the present picture was described quite inaccurately as a Welsh view, ‘ Llanberis and Dolbadarn Castle ’. It is unclear if a specific location in Wicklow is intended. Perhaps most likely it is based on sketches made in the Dargle Valley worked into a pleasing but not topographi- cally accurate whole. Described by one contemporary visitor as ‘most exceed- ingly romantic and beautiful’, the scenery of the Dargle which inspired Barret here was instrumental in the swift rise of the Dublin School of Irish landscape painting, pioneered by Barret in the 1750s and ‘60s. Under the patronage of Viscount Powerscourt, and the inspiration of Edmund Burke, Barret painted repeatedly in the area. The Dargle scenery continued to inspire Barret and his first two exhibits in the Society of Artists in London in 1764 were of the Powerscourt Waterfall and the Dargle River. Dr Rooney suggests this juncture in Barret’s career as the date of the present composition, when the young Irish artist, recently arrived in London, was still inspired by the Wicklow scenery with which he had recently so fruitfully engaged. Equally, it is possible that this is one of the paint- ings that Barret brought with him from Dublin to London. We thank Logan Morse for her assistance in preparing this cata- logue entry. Fig 1 George Barret c.1732-1784 An Extensive Wooded Landscape with Fishermen Hauling in their Nets Oil on canvas 137 x 195 cms (NGI 4750)Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland