Lot 354: JAMES BARRY R.A.

BLACKPOOL, IRELAND 1741 - 1806 LONDON THE EDUCATION OF ACHILLES together with a Standing Male in the Pose of Hercules, by the same hand Quantity: 2 The first: pen and brown ink over pencil; signed lower right: J Barry Inv., inscribed verso: Phthengomia ois Themis estin thusan epithestho Bebeloir / pasin omois – Orpheus -, stamped lower left with an unidentified collectors mark; the second: brown wash over traces of black chalk, on two sheets of wove paper; signed lower left: Ja.u Barry; inscribed in blue ink lower right: C. Bentley The first: 350 by 270 mm; the second 384 by 212 mm

The second: Newcastle, 1974, no. 118; London, 1975, no. 75

The second: W. Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry, London 1981, p. 257, no. 80

The first: purchased from Alister Mathews, June 1951; the second: George, 4th Earl of Warwick (1818-1893) (L.2600); possibly his sale, London, Christie's, 20-21 May 1896, unknown lot number; purchased from Hugh Scarfe, circa 1956

The first drawing shows Chiron instructing Achilles in the art of music. Barry created it as as a study for his painting The Education of Achilles, a work he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1772 and which is now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. The Study of Hercules is a preparatory drawing for a figure of the demi-god, conceived as a stone statue, on the extreme left of Barry’s painting The Victors of Olympus.1 In 1777 the Royal Society of Arts commissioned him to create six large frieze-panels symbolizing the Progress of Civilization, in order to decorate the Great Room of their London premises. Barry finally completed the scheme in 1784. 1. E. Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, vol. II, London 1962, pp. 168, 169