Adam's IRISH OLD MASTERS 5th November 2024

70 Together with Thomas Roberts (see lot 40), George Barret is the towering figure among the Irish-born landscape painters, sometimes called the Dublin Group, who brought the art to such a notable peak in the second half of the eighteenth centu - ry. In 1778, Thomas Campbell (1733-95) noted the ‘general excellence of Irish artists in landscape’ and, elsewhere, he suggested that Irish artists had ‘no com - petitors’ in the genre. Barret who made his career in London and was honoured as one of the foundation members of the Royal Academy in 1768, would have pro - vided a crucial role model for the young - er generation, such as Roberts, back home in Dublin. Barret is an endlessly inventive artist and, while he never repeats himself verbatim, he enjoys ringing the changes by play - ing with the different elements within his landscape syntax – figures, animals, trees, water, architecture – to produce what are perhaps best seen as ‘variations on a theme’, in which the component parts may vary, but the idiom is recognisably – and distinctively – Barret. Indicating, how he composed his work by a process of continuously shuffling different motifs, which he had observed individually and sketched directly from nature, to create different, and often very varied, compo- sitions, the present large landscape of - fers an intriguing comparison with a work 45 GEORGE BARRET (1732 -1784) Classical River Landscape with Travellers and a White Horse Oil on canvas, 97 x 123cm Provenance: Parker Gallery, London label verso € 40,000 - 60,000