About the age of seventeen he first attempted oil paintings ; and . between that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he produced several large ones, which decorated his father's house, and represented subjects not often handled by young men ; such as /Emits escaping with his family from the flames of Troy ; Susanna and the Elders ; Daniel in the Lion's Den, &c. At this period, he also produced the picture which first drew him intirpublic notice, launched him on an ampler theatre than his native town of Cork afforded, and, above all, gained him the acquaintance and patron age of Mr Burke. This picture was founded on an old tradition of the landing of St Patrick on the sea coast of Cashel, and of the conversion and baptism of the king of that district by the patron saint of Ireland. The priest, in the act of baptizing his new convert, inadvertently strikes the spear of the crozier in the foot of the monarch. The holy father, ab sorbed in the duties of his Ace, does not perceive what he has done, and the king, without interrupt ing the ceremony, bears the pain with immoveable fortitude. This incident, together with the gestures and expressions of the attendants, certainly formed a good subject for an historical picture ; and Mr Barry's manner of treating it was such as to ensure him the applause and admiration of the connoisseurs of the metropolis of the sister kingdom, where it was exhibited ie 1762 or 1763. Mr Barry took this picture with him to Dublin ; and afterwards going to the exhibition room, being delighted with the en comiums it received from the spectators, he could not refrain from making himself known as the paint er. His pretensions were treated with great con tempt by the company, and Barry burst into tears of anger and vexation. But the incredulity of his hearers was a compliment paid to the real or sup posed excellence of his painting. It appears that a Dr Sleigh, a, physician of Cork, and a sensible and amiable man, was first instrumental in introducing young Barry to the notice of Mr Burke. During their early acquaintance, having fallen into a dispute on the subject of tate, Barry quoted a in support of his opinion from the Essay on the Sublime and BeaulVid, which had been just then published anonymously, and which Barry, in his youthful ad miration of it, had, it seems, transcribed entire. Burke affected to treat this work as a theoretical ro mance, of no authority whatever, which threw Barry into such a rage in its defence, that Mr Burke thought it necessary to appease him by owning him. self to be the author. The scene ended in Barry's running to embrace him, and showing him the copy of the work, which he had been at the pains to tran scribe. He passed his time in Dublin in reading, drawing, and society. While he resided here, an anecdote is preserved of him, which marks the cha racter of the man. He had been enticed by his companions several times to carousings at a tavern, • and one night, as he wandered home by himself, a thought struck him of the frivolity and viciousness of thus misspending his time : the fault, he imagined, lay in his money, and, therefore, without more ado, in order to avoid the morrow's temptation, he threw the whole of his wealth, which perhaps amounted to no great sum, into the Liffey, and looked himself up at his favourite pursuits. After a residence of seven or eight months in Dublin, an opportunity offered of accompanying some part of Mr Burke's family to London, which he eagerly embraced. This took place sometime in the year 1764, when he was twenty three years of age, and with one of those advantages which do not aiways fall to the lot of young artists on their arrival in the British capital, that of being recommended to the acquaintance of the most emi men in the profession by the persuasive elo quence of a man who, to genius in himself, added the rare and noble quality of encouraging it in others ; this was Mr Burke, who lest no time, not merely in making Barry known, but in procuring for him the first of all objects to an inexperienced and destitute young artist, employment. This employ ment was chiefly that of copying in oil drawings by Mr Stewart, better known by the name of Athenian Stewart ; and whether it suited the ambition of Bar ry or not, to be at this kind of labour, yet there can be no doubt that he profited by his connection with such a man as Stewart, and had full leisure to cast his eye about, and to improve by the general aspect of art and artists that occupied the period.
Mr Burke and his other friends thinking it important that he should be introduced to a wider and nobler school of art than this country afforded, now came forward with the means necessary to accomplish this object; and in the latter end of 1765 Mr Barry pro eeeded to the Continent, where he remained al the beginning of 1771, studying his art with an enthu siasm which seemed to augur the highest success, and making observations on the different chefd'eruvree of Italy with equal independence of judgment and nicety of discrimination. He was supported during this period by the friendly liberality of the Burke family (Edmund, William, and Richard), who allow. ed him forty pounds a-year for his necessary expen diture, besides occasional remittances for particular purposes. He proceeded first to Paris, then to Rome where he remained upwards of three years, from ; thence to Florence and Bologna, and home through Venice. His letters to the Burke", giving an ac count of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Leo nardo da Vinci, show a complete insight into the characteristic merits of their works, and would make us wonder (if the case were at all singular) how he could enter with such force, delicacy, and feeling, into excellencies of which he never transplanted an atom into his own works. He saw, felt, and wrote his impressions were profound and refined, but the expreision of them 'must be initanitaneous, such as gave the results of them with a stroke of the pen, as' they were received by a glance of the eye, and he could not wait for the slow process of the pencil for embodying his conceptions in the necessary details of his own art. It was his desire to make the ideas and
language of painting express abstract results by abstract mechanical means (a thing impossible),—to stamp the idea in his mind at once upon the canvass, without knowledge of its parts, without labour, without patience, without a moment's time or thought intervening between what he wished to do and its being done, that was per haps the principal obstacle to his ever attaining a degree of excellence in his profession at all propor tioned either to his ambition or his genius. It is • probable, that, as his hand had not the patience to give the details of objects, his eye, from the same habit of mind, had not the power to analyze them. It is possible, however, to see the results without the same laborious process that is necessary to convey them ; for the eye tees faster than the hand can move.
We suspect Mr Barry did not succeed very well in copying the pictures ho so well describes; because he appears to have copied but few, only one of Raphael, as far as we can find, and three front Titian, whom he justly considered as the model of colouring, and as more perfect in that departmeot of the art than either Raphael or Michael Angelo were in theirs, expression and form, the highest enoel lence in which he conceives to hare been possessed only by the ancients. In copying from the antique, however, he manifested the same aversion to labour, or to that kind of labour which, by showing us our defects, compels us to make exertions to remedy them. He made all his drawings from the antique, by means of a delineator, that is, a mechanical in strument, to save the trouble of acquiring a know. ledge both of form and p ,rtion. In this manner, equally gratifying to his i olence and his self-love he is stated to have made numberless sketches of the antique statues, of all sizes, and in all directions, carefully noting down on his sketch-paper their se veral measurements and proportions.
The consequences are before us in his pictures; namely, that all those of his figures which he took from these memorandums are deficient in everything but form, and that all the others are equally deficient in form and everything else. If he did not employ his pencil properly, or enough, in copying from the models he saw, he employed his thoughts and his pen about them with indefatigable zeal and spirit. He talked well about them ; he wrote well about them ; he made researches into all the collateral branches of art and knowledge, sculpture, architec• ture, cameos, seals, and intaglio,. There is a long letter of his, addressed to Mr Burke, on the origin of the Gothic style of architecture, written, as it should seem, to convince his friend and patron of his industry in neglecting his .proper business. Soon after his arrival at Rome, he became embroiled with the whole tribe of connoisseurs, painters, and patrons there, whether native or foreign, on subjects of eirtilt and be continued in this state of hostility with those around him while he staid there, and, indeed, to the ' end of his life. One might be tempted to suppose, that Barry chiefly studied his art as a subject to em ploy his dialectics upon. On this unfortunate disposi tion of his to wrangling and controversy, as it was likely to affect his progress in his art and his progress in life, he received some most judicious advice from Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr Burke, his answers to 'which show an admirable self-ignorance. On his ir ritable denunciations of the practices and tricks of 'the Italian picture-dealers, Mr Burke makes a re flection well deserving of attention. " In particular, you may be'assured that the traffic in antiquity. and all the enthusiasm, folly, and fraud, which may be in it, never did, nor never can hurt the merit of living artists. Quite the contrary, in my opinion ; for have ever observed, that, whatever it be that turns the minds of men to anything relative to the arts, even the most remotely so, brings artists more and more into credit and repute ; and though, now and then, the mere broker and dealer in such things runs away with a great deal of profit, yet, in the end, in genious men will find themselves gainers by the dis positions which are nourished and diffused in the world by such pursuits." Mr Barry painted two pic tures while abroad, his Adam and Eve and his Phi loctetes. The first of these be sent home as a speci men of his progress in the art. It does not appear 'to have given much satisfaction. His Philoctetes he brought home with him. It is a most wretched, coarse, anclassical performance, the directly oppo site to all that he thought it to be. During his stay 'at Rome, he made an excursion to Naples, and was highly delighted with the collections of art there. All the time he was abroad, Mr Burke and his bro thers not only were punctual in their remittances to him, but kept up a most friendly,and cordial cor respondence. On one occasion, owing to the delay of a letter, a bill which Barry had resented a banker was dishonoured. This detained Barry for some time at the place where he was in very awk ward circumstances, and he had thoughts of getting rid of his chagrin and of his prospects in life at once, by running away and turning friar. For some time previous to his return to England, Mr Hamilton (af terwards Sir William) appears to have been almost the only person with whom he kept up any intimacy. -It was on his return home through Milan that he witnessed, and has recorded with due reprobation, the destruction of Leonardo's Last Supper, which two bungling artists were employed to paint over by order of one Count de Firmian, the secretary of state.