Home  Catalogue Introduction
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Introduction |
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Sir Claude Francis Barry is an enigma: the most basic facts of his life are tinged with uncertainty. For thirty years he was known as Claude, until suddenly, in middle age, he adopted his second name of Francis. Though his family was extremely rich, he died in apparent poverty. A bon viveur he was also a dedicated artist. While avowing pacifism, he defended fascist despots. For such an extravagant character, Barry left very little evidence of his life. Virtually abandoned by his parents, he abandoned his own family in turn. His descendants know little about him. The few friends from his youth are now dead. Those who knew him in later life describe a tall, shy, eccentric old man.
Much of Barry's early life has been pieced together from letters found in his briefcase after his death. Also in the briefcase – along with a very full passport and his battered old eye-shade – was an unpublished manuscript on painting. This is the source of his quoted pronouncements on life and art.
In many ways Sir Claude Francis Barry conforms to the stereotype of the romantic painter. Born in 1883 to an aristocratic, industrial family, Barry defied parental expectations and became an artist. A difficult childhood, beginning with the death of his mother, was compounded when his father remarried. His step-mother seems to have had him disinherited in favour of her own offspring.
Barry left school early after a mysterious breakdown, had several ßirtations with young women, then married against his parents wishes. Untamed by domesticity, he lived a restless, bohemian life, with wine and women in abundance.
Trained in the Newlyn School of realist paintings, Barry was embraced by the artistic establishment at an early age. By the time he was 23 he was exhibiting with London's prestigious Royal Academy. Over the next decade he showed with the R.A., the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Society of Scottish Artists and the Salon des Artists Français. He experimented with the Pointillism of the Post-Impressionists and the mechanistic Vorticism which evolved during the First World War.
Though he was trained as a painter, Barry excelled as an etcher. In the 1920's he deserted his family, moved to Europe and concentrated on etching. In this most precise of art forms he developed a style which combines striking compositions with subtle depictions of atmosphere. His etchings won him major awards in both Italy and France.
Although he had studied with some of the most successful British artists of his day, Barry's aesthetic sensibility was always more French than English. The symbolism of the Pont Aven School, the decorative distortions of the Nabis, the colourful exuberance of the Fauves all find echoes in his work, but Francis Barry evolved a unique and unmistakable style. After he returned to England at the outbreak of the Second World War, Barry abandoned the narrative landscapes of his earlier works. Over the next three decades he moved slowly towards abstraction. Throughout his career colour was his passion: he developed a narrow but intensely pure palette. He distilled line and form to create a rhythmic unity. Constantly striving for simplicity, he achieved, in his later work, paintings of extraordinary beauty and serenity.
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