Thomas Barker of Bath

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 24 April 2008, lot 97.

Barker was entirely self-taught and showed a remarkable talent for both figurative drawing and landscape from an early age. When just sixteen he moved with his family to Bath, where the patronage of an opulent coachbuilder named Charles Spackman allowed him to follow his vocation as an artist. Between 1791 and 1793, still in his early twenties, Barker travelled to Italy with the engraver John Hibbert. In Rome he became a close associate of John Flaxman and the two were both members of the Society of English Art Students, a dining club which met on the first Saturday of each month. During his stay Barker filled numerous sketchbooks with views of the city, its ruins and the surrounding campagna, persisting "in going out to sketch in the mid-day sun, until he was disabled by a 'coup de soleil.'" The present work, however, is one of only a small number of oils he painted whilst actually in Rome.