Thomas Barker (painter) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Thomas Barker
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| Born | 1769 |
| Died | 1847 |
| Nationality | Welsh |
Thomas Barker (also known as Barker of Bath) was a British painter. He lived from 1769 to 1847. He was famous for his paintings of landscapes and scenes of country life.
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Early Life and Learning
Thomas Barker was born in 1769 in Trosnant, a small place near Pontypool in Monmouthshire, Wales. His father, Benjamin Barker, was also an artist. He mostly painted horses and later decorated Japanware.
From a young age, Thomas showed a great talent for drawing and painting. What's amazing is that he never had any art lessons! He taught himself everything he knew.
When Thomas was sixteen, his family moved to Bath. There, a rich coach-builder named Charles Spackman helped him follow his dream of becoming an artist. For the first four years, Thomas spent his time copying paintings by old Dutch and Flemish masters.
At twenty-one, he traveled to Rome with enough money to live comfortably. While there, he didn't paint much. Instead, he enjoyed the social life.
Life as a Famous Artist
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Thomas Barker showed his paintings at important art shows for nearly 50 years. He exhibited almost one hundred pictures during this time. He was a very busy artist and painted many different subjects.
His painting called The Woodman was very famous. He painted two versions of it, both life-sized. Another well-known work was a huge fresco (a painting on a wall). It was 30 feet long and 12 feet high! This fresco showed The Inroad of the Turks upon Scio, in April, 1822. He painted it on the wall of his own home in Bath.
When Barker was at the peak of his career, many people loved his art. His paintings like The Woodman, Old Tom, and his scenes of gipsy groups and country people were copied everywhere. You could find them on pottery, china, and even fabrics like cotton and linen.
He earned a lot of money from selling his artwork. He used some of it to build a large house for himself. He filled his home with sculptures and other beautiful art. Thomas Barker passed away in Bath in 1847.
New Ways of Printing
Thomas Barker was one of the first British artists to use Lithography. This is a special printing method. He created two prints, Young Boy Seated and Tilemakers, for an early British book of lithographs.
In 1813, he published his own series of lithographs called Rustic figures after nature. This was the first time a single British artist released a series of lithographs. Some of the original stones he used for printing still exist today!
Famous Artworks
You can find six of Barker's paintings in the Tate Gallery in London. These include A Woodman and his Dog in a Storm and several landscapes.
The British Museum also has many of Barker's drawings and prints.
Three more of his paintings, Italian Landscape (1808), Landscape with a Waterfall, and Landscape with Cattle, are at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
One of his paintings, Wooded landscape with gipsies round a camp fire, was featured on a TV show called Fake or Fortune? in 2019. It turned out that Barker might have painted over an older work by another artist. Barker was very inspired by Thomas Gainsborough and painted many gypsy scenes himself. He even used a grouping from Gainsborough's The Gipsies in one of his own self-portraits from 1789.
In 2019, another of Barker's paintings was found at the Birmingham Art Gallery. It was a forest scene that people thought was a copy of a famous painting by Gainsborough. After being cleaned and restored, experts confirmed it was indeed a work by Thomas Barker.
In 1825, Thomas Barker painted a large fresco showing the Chios Massacre on the walls of Doric House in Bath.
His Artistic Family
Thomas Barker wasn't the only artist in his family! His younger brother, Benjamin Barker II (1776–1838), was also a talented landscape painter. Benjamin II showed his works at the Royal Academy.
Thomas's son, Thomas Jones Barker (1815–1882), also became a painter. He studied art in Paris. Many of Jones Barker's paintings were about military events. These include Lord Clive's relief of Lucknow and The Allied generals before Sebastopol.
