AN OLD WOMAN AND CHILDREN IN A COTTAGE INTERIOR
William Gerard Barry (1864-1941)Barry studied first at the School of Art in Cork, then in the Academie Julian in Paris. He painted with contemporaries in Etaples in north-west France. He exhibited canvases at the Paris Salon and at the Royal Academy in London. He won the coveted Taylor Prize in Dublin. His early work showed great accomplishment, and he seemed to be on the verge of a successful career as an artist in Ireland and Europe. But then, through family or person circumstances, Barry left his native country, and emigrated to Canada. He lived a long life, but much of it seems to have been spent in peripatetic wanderings in North America, the South Seas, and Europe, settling in the South of France, with occasional return visits back to Cork, gaining what casual work or portrait commissions that he could as he went along.
Much of the circumstances of Barry’s later life remain obscure. Only about ten of his canvases are so far recorded, and only one of these is in a public collection: the much-loved Time Flies of 1887 in the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (fig. 1). A few of his portrait drawings are in private collections. Although his work is often of Continental subject-matter it displays a strong Irish sensibility. Thus the re-appearance of the present Barry painting, An Old Woman with Children in a Cottage Interior, which has always remained in the artist’s family, is a welcome occasion.
William Gerard Barry was born into a large family in Ballyadam, Carrigtwohill, nine miles east of Cork city, in 1864. There seems to have been members of the Barry (or de Barra) family in Carrigtwohill since the 13th century. Barry was one of seven children, and the second son of William Henry Barry J.P. and Pauline Roche. Barry senior was a local magistrate and was Post-Master of Cork. 1 The artist was a cousin of the Smith-Barry family of nearby Fota House.2
Growing up in Co. Cork, close to the coast, the estuary of the River Lee, Barryscourt Castle and the woods of Fota Island, Barry developed a love of nature and rural subjects. He studied at the School of Art, Cork, 1881-83. This was an extremely interesting period, when the genre painter James Brenan was headmaster at the School, when Cork painter Henry Thaddeus Jones, who had just gained success in Paris, was teaching there briefly, and when the Cork Industrial and Fine Art Exhibition was held in 1883, attracting over 10,000 visitors.3
At the end of August 1882, Barry received good marks in his summer examinations.4 One of his teachers at the School of Art in 1883 is said to have been Henry Thaddeus Jones, a former pupil, and only a few years older than Barry. He had recently studied in Paris, and exhibited successfully at the Salon. His visit to Cork must have been brief as he was now based in Italy.5 But he was important in encouraging the young Barry to go to Paris to continue his studies at the Academie Julian.
In 1883 Barry went to Paris and registered at the Academie Julian on 8th September.6 He appears to have been recommended by a friend, perhaps a fellow artist named Formies. His hand-written signature ‘W. G. Barry’ is recorded in a rare, surviving register of the Atelier of Boulanger and Lefebvre, two professors at the Academie.7 Although these teachers would have visited only once or twice a week, Barry would have gained a sound instruction in life drawing. In Paris he lived at no. 54, rue Notre Dame des Champs. This street in Montparnasse “accommodated more studios than any other street in Paris” and included those of many leading French artists. 8 (In the 1920s the writers Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound were to live there). Barry remained at Julian’s until 1884.
Then, or a year or two later, Barry also studied in the atelier of portrait painter Carolus Duran, gaining from him an interest in Realism, and a bold, ‘painterly’ approach. According to the recollections of his niece, Edith Bourke, Barry also enjoyed a lively student life: “In 1886 he jumped into the Seine and rescued a man and a boy from drowning, for which he received the French Humanité medal‘’. And Barry “often spoke of his days in Montmartre, of his many spirited adventures there; on one occasion ... he spent a few nights in gaol for removing … the overhead trolley of a tram”.9
Barry was now beginning to make his name in Cork. Peter Murray records that a ‘Conversazione’ was held at the School of Art in Cork in April 1886, and that a painting by Barry entitled The Fountain was exhibited there. It depicted a woman at a fountain, filling a pitcher of water for a child.10 In the same year Barry enjoyed the success of having his painting Retour de la Peche aux Crevettes, a scene of prawn fishermen, accepted at the Paris Salon. 11 This was an extremely prestigious event for the artist, aged only twenty-two. The picture was sent from Barry’s Paris address, chez M. Foinet, 54 rue Notre Dame des Champs, but the picture must have been painted on the coast, perhaps at Etaples.
Etaples was situated on the north-west coast of France, eighteen miles south of Boulogne, and there was a community of artists there: French, American, English and Irish. Amongst Barry’s compatriots were Frank O’Meara, Sarah Harrison, and fellow Cork painters Edith Somerville and Egerton Coghill. From Etaples Barry sent a painting entitled Abandoned to the Royal Dublin Society in 1887, and for this he was awarded the Taylor prize for £30.12
It was probably at Etaples that Barry painted Time Flies (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork), in 1887. The painting shows an elderly peasant woman in a woodland glade beside a river. The subject and the title of the picture suggest the theme of youth and age. The picture is similar to many plein air scenes of the period. But the golden tonality suggests nostalgia for the woods and estuary at Fota, and Barry uses an original dappled style to convey sunshine.
In 1888 he enjoyed success in London: he sent Time Flies to the Royal Academy, from his home address in Carrigtwohill. He was also represented at the Irish Exhibition in London with two pictures sent from Co. Cork: Sunset in Picardy and The Shepherd’s Call.13 Curiously, he never exhibited his paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin.
However, the year 1888 also marked a sad change in Barry’s circumstances: he appears to have had an argument with his father, and departed from Ireland.14 He sailed on a trans-Atlantic liner from Cobh to Canada, working his passage as a deck hand. Barry visited Montreal, and worked his way in Canada with various jobs, for instance as a ranch hand, and also painting wooden sign boards for ranches. He thereby saved money, which enabled him to work at his painting.
It is possible that Barry made a return visit to Paris, circa 1890, and studied with the history painter Fernand Cormon, but this has not been confirmed. In 1911 Barry painted a charming plein air study of Breaking Waves, perhaps on the coast of Ireland, or America.15 He received commissions for portraits including one of President Wilson, which was apparently hung in the White House. In 1913 John Gilbert wrote in Cork that Barry “is now a most successful portrait painter in America”.16
Barry appears to have journeyed to the South Seas, travelling in the company of Frederick O’Brien, author of White Shadows in the South Seas, published in 1919.17 In 1924 he painted a portrait of Lady Davis, wife of Montreal philanthropist, Sir Mortimer B. Davis.18 Barry was living in New York in 1926, and appears to have visited Brittany in 1931.19
Barry remained unmarried, and settled in the French Riviera, renting a small studio there. He painted less, but he received portrait commissions in charcoal. His niece Edith Bourke remembered occasional visits home to Cobh by her ‘Uncle Bill’.
Barry retired to St. Jean-de-Luz on the Atlantic coast, near the Spanish border. He is said to have shared a studio with Augustus John. He remained on here at the outset of the Second World War. Concerned about his circumstances (Barry was now in his late seventies), his niece wrote to Barry, or to a colleague of his. Mr Stephen Mullard, working in the Foreign Office in London, wrote a long letter in reply, informing her of Barry’s mixed circumstances, both personal and financial.20
The artist seems to have had a loyal servant, nick-named ‘Bonjour’, yet he was happy to mend his own shoes. He would like to have returned to Ireland, but was worried about disapproval from his family. Barry may have had an annuity of £2000, but much of it had gone in paying debts. Mullard had ensured that he was looked after by the Old Colony Trust. He wrote that Barry had “had a good collection of sketches, watercolours and oils left, most of which, as he had furnished them to various people, had now disappeared‘’. Barry was also suffering from ill-health, or had had an accident, and Mullard had recommended that he go to Portugal.
Barry remained in St. Jean-de-Luz at the outset of the Second World War. There was the hope that he would be evacuated by an American warship offshore. But he died on 9th September 1941, apparently when a German bomb went off nearby, and a wardrobe fell on him. In the 1970s Mrs Edie Bourke wrote a brief, unpublished recollection of her uncle.
An Old Woman and Children in a Cottage Interior is a homely, familiar subject; such peasant interiors with figures at the hearth being represented by many artists in the 19th century. But is it of an Irish or a Continental subject? The elderly woman wears a white bonnet, and a long dark dress, and apron. At first sight, it may appear that her hands are resting on her lap, and she is lost in thought. But closer inspection reveals that she is holding a long-handled frying pan over the fire, and she is cooking food. The children wait with anticipation.
As in Time Flies the grandmother has been left to mind the children. The girl, with pretty face, rosy lips, and curly black hair looks at the flames, and she holds the younger child, perhaps her brother, or a sister with short fair hair, who holds a doll, protectively. Both children wear pale blue smocks over their clothes and sturdy shoes. The woman’s sense of calm and reflection is contrasted by the youthful liveliness of the children.
The theme of Youth and Age was popular in 19th century painting. Yet the choice of elderly people and children as models was also of practical, as well as moral, application for artists. These were the people who remained in the village or at the hearth during the daytime – while the men were away toiling on the land, and the sea, and young woman were working in the fields or on the beach, or working in service – and, if agreeable, would pose for painters.
Barry’s picture shows a simple domestic scene. The bareness and simplicity of the interior suggests that it is an Irish cottage subject. Aside from the figures, the light wooden chair with rush seat, and the low golden earthenware bowl, soon to be filled with hot food, the cottage is bare. Smoke rises from the fire, and the walls are rough. The fire has been brought out to the edge of the hearth. The mantelpiece is just visible at the top of the picture.
Such cottage interiors with hearths were popular in 19th century Irish painting.21 As a student in Cork, Barry would have admired the impressive interiors with figures painted by his teacher James Brenan. Brenan’s charming little painting Patchwork, 1892 (Crawford Art Gallery), for example, shows an elderly woman sewing by the hearth. In Castletownshend in West Cork Edith Somerville was painting realistic pictures of similar subjects: for example, Retrospect 1887, showing an elderly woman in an interior, and The Goosegirl, 1888 (Crawford Art Gallery), featuring a girl in an interior, not dissimilar to Barry’s model. The white bonnet and dark dress in Barry’s picture are similar to those worn by some women in Brenan’s Co. Cork interiors. It is possible then that he painted it on a return visit home. However, the bonnet appears plainer and lacks frills at the front. Is it possible then that Barry’s canvas was painted in France rather than Ireland?
The theme of the elderly peasant woman in a cottage interior – seated by the hearth, preparing a meal, darning clothes, looking out the door, or simply lost in thought, recollecting her youth – was one that was popular in European Realist painting from Millet to Kathe Kollwitz, especially in areas such as Normandy, Brittany and the Netherlands. Barry’s elderly woman thus has affinities with that in Jozef Israel’s Growing Old, circa 1878 (Gemeentemuseum, the Hague) and a host of pictures from the 1880s and ‘90s by Irish and Continental artists. These include Moderke Verhoft, by Walter Oasborne, An elderly lady making lace, an etching by Joseph M. Kavanagh, and Interior of a cottage, 1892, by Helen M. Trevor (all National Gallery of Ireland). Amongst the Continental pictures are Counting her Beads, 1892, and Growing Old, 1899, by A. Mouette, Sunbeam,1891 by Kuehl-Gotthart, Old Woman near the Fireplace by Hans Von Bartel, and Henri Delavallee’s characterful series of etchings of elderly Breton and Normandy women, 1890-93 (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) .
The tonality of the painting is subdued, yet there is a pleasing balance between dark and light tones, and in the use of attractive colours throughout the picture: ochre, pale blue, maroon, pale umber, orange and gold. There is some affinity between the figures of the old woman and children and those in Time Flies. But there is a lightness in the brushwork of the interior, and the signature, ‘W. Gerard Barry’, is more relaxed in manner than the neat squared inscription ‘W. G. Barry in Time Flies, suggesting that the interior is a later work. Perhaps, as mentioned, it was painted on a return visit home to Cork, or on a later visit to north-west France.
An Old Woman with Children in a Cottage Interior may never have been exhibited and has remained in the Barry family collection for many generations. Its provenance lies in direct descent from the artist himself. The painting is interesting for its rarity; it is one of few oil paintings by Barry to come on to the market in recent years. The majority of his paintings and drawings remain to be re-discovered, and hopefully more of them will re-appear in future years.
Julian Campbell,
Cork, August 2007
1 Rev. Edmund Barry, Barrymore: Records of the Barrys of Co. Cork, Cork, 1902, pp. 207-8.
2 ‘Recollections of Mrs Edith Bourke, niece of W. G. Barry’, Crawford Art Gallery Archives; Julian Campbell, in Peter Murray, Crawford Art Gallery: Illustrated Summary Catalogue, Cork, 1992, pp. 168-9; and Theo Snoddy, Dictionary of Irish Artists, Twentieth Century, 2002, pp. 27-8.
3 Peter Murray, op. cit., p. 248.
4 Peter Murray, ibid..
5 Brendan Rooney, The Life and Work of Henry Jones Thaddeus, Dublin, 2003, p. 94.
6 List of students at Academie Julian, Archives Nationale de France, Paris, 63 AS 1 (2).
7 Register of Atelier of Boulanger and Lefebvre, Academie Julian, Archives Nationale de France, Paris, 63 AS 9.
8 John Milner, The Studios of Paris, 1988, p. 211.
9 Recollections of Edie Bourke.
10 Peter Murray, op. cit., p. 252.
11 Catalogue of Paris Salon, 1886.
12 Records of Taylor Prize, R.D.S.
13 Ann M. Stewart, Irish Art Loan Exhibitions, Index of Artists, Vol. I, 1990.
14 Recollections of Edie Bourke.
15 Milmo Penny Fine Art, Dublin, December 2001.
16 John Gilbert, ‘A Record of Authors, Artists and Musical Composers, born in the county Cork’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Vol. 19, no. 100, October – December 1913, p. 179.
17 Theo Snoddy, op. cit., p. 27.
18 Dominic Milmo Penny, 2001, op. cit.
19 Theo Snoddy, op. cit., p. 27.
20 Letter from Mr Stephen Mullard, Foreign Office, London, to Mrs Edith Bourke, circa early 1940s.
21 For a scholarly discussion of this subject see Claudia Kinmouth, Irish Rural Interiors in Art, Yale, 2006, and Peter Murray (ed.), Whipping the Herring: Survival and Celebration in Nineteenth Century Irish Art, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 2006. I am very grateful to Peter Murray for assistance in my research upon W. G. Barry.
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