Adam's IRISH OLD MASTERS 5th November 2024

74 Provenance: With The Gorry Gallery, Dublin Exhibited: Gorry Gallery, ‘An Exhibition of 18th-21st century Irish Painting’, Dublin October 2020 A waggon laden with logs is drawn by a train of horses through a landscape of trees which are begin - ning to turn to imbue the verdure with a rich autumnal palette. This is one of a small group of works of related subject matter including a large gouache, Timber Wain on a rough Road in the Yale Center for British Art. Here Barret is working in direct competition with Thomas Gainsborough who produced works showing harvest wagons both during his Bath period - one was exhibited in 1767 at the Society of Artists (Barber Institute, Birmingham)- and in 1784, the year Barret died (Art Gallery of Ontario). Susan Sloman suggests that Gainsborough may have been ‘concerned that Barret was stealing his thunder’ given the positive reviews the Irish artists was receiving in the contemporary press. In 1775, for exam - ple, the Middlesex Journal wrote enthusiastically, praising: Everything that a warm imagination can produce. The groups of cattle are admirably disposed; the sunshine true; the plan well-conceived and furnished with the most masterly brush possible. The vast productions of nature, when sporting in the fields, amongst rocks, trees, cattle, and rural figures of every sort, are subservient to [Barret’s] will, and he imitates them so well that it may with truth be said, he adds to their beauties, and not impoverishes her works. It is likely that Barret’s gouaches date from about 1774 but given the compositional similarities Bar - ret must have studied Gainsborough’s Harvest Waggon in the exhibition in 1767. One of the reasons Barret may have been drawn to the subject matter was his move to Paddington, which was then a rural village outside London. As Henry Angelo describes it, there were ‘a few old houses on each side of the Edgeware-road, together with some ale-houses of very picturesque appearance, being screened by high elms, with long troughs for watering the teams of hay-wagons, on their way to and from the mar - ket’. Barret did not have far to walk from his front door to find the suitably picturesque subject matter that he paints here. Article by William Laffan and Dr. Logan Morse, (who recently completed a PhD researching George Barret), courtesy of The Gorry Gallery, Dublin 46 GEORGE BARRET RA (1732-1784) Hauling Timber Through A Wood Gouache and gum Arabic on paper, 46 x 62cm Signed € 7,000 - 10,000