Biography of Barker, Thomas (English painter and lithographer, 1769-1847)

Thomas was the eldest son of Benjamin Barker, an animal painter and decorator of japanned ware, who brought his family from Pontypool in 1783 to settle in Bath.  Thomas soon showed precocious artistic talent, possibly nurtured under William Hoare. With the patronage of a local coach builder and property owner named Charles Spackman he was encouraged to copy old master pictures and also the later landscapes and fancy pictures of Thomas Gainsborough. After a period of study in Italy and a brief trial stay in London, he returned to Bath in 1798 to remain there for the rest of his life.

In order to provide the essential showroom where he could exhibit his work, a thirty-foot long gallery was included in the plans of the new house built for Barker and his wife on Sion Hill by the architect J.M.Gandy. On one wall of this room he painted a large impressive fresco of The Massacre of the Inhabitants of Chios by the Turks. Apart from some fine portraits in the earlier part of his career, as ‘Barker of Bath’ he was famed chiefly for his rustic subjects and picturesque landscapes owing much to the influence of Gainsborough and George Morland.

Barker's home and gallery on the corner of Sion Hill stood within a few yards of Sir William Holburne's house at 10, Cavendish Crescent.  The connection between the two men is not yet entirely clear, although Holburne or his sisters almost certainly took lessons with Barker, and a number of Barker's works are in Holburne's collection.