for his ceasing to exhibit at the Royal Academy is his disgust and anger at the reception accorded to his ‘Death of General Wolfe,’ in which he represented all the figures nude. In 1771 Benjamin West had dared to paint the same scene in a natural manner, with uniforms and hair dressed à la mode, and Barry's picture was doubtless intended as a protest against what he thought a degradation of art.
Barry soon after his return attracted attention not only by his pictures, but by his pen and his projects for great mural decorations. It was in 1772, according to a letter he wrote to the Duke of Richmond, that he first proposed to the academicians to decorate St. Paul's with historical pictures at their own expense. ‘I had long set my heart upon it, as the only means of establishing a solid, manly taste for real art, in the place of our trifling, contemptible passion for the daubing of little inconsequential things—portraits of dogs, landscapes, &c., things in which the mind, which is the soul of true art, has no concern—that have hitherto only served to disgrace us all over Europe.’ The Royal Academy made the proposal to the chapter in 1773, and selected the artists, of whom Barry was one, to carry it out, but it was ultimately rejected. A similar project, in 1774, to decorate the new room of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi also fell through.
‘Having,’ says Cunningham, ‘failed in painting the nation into a love of the historic art, he resolved to make a last effort, and if possible write them into it.’ In 1775 he published ‘An Inquiry into the Real or Imaginary Obstructions to the Arts in England,’ in which he demolished, with much force and eloquence, the opinions of Winckelmann and other foreign critics, that the genius of the English was limited by the climate of their country, and also urged his own theory, that art, before it could be honourable in England, must devote itself to historic composition.
In 1777 Barry offered to execute, with his own hand, the whole of the proposed decoration at the Society of Arts, ‘upon a much larger and more comprehensive plan,’ without payment, the society to find him in canvas, colours, and models. ‘My intention is,’ wrote Barry to Sir George Saville, ‘to carry the painting uninterruptedly round the room (as has been done in the great rooms at the Vatican and Farnese galleries), by which the expense of frames will be saved to the society.’ The offer was accepted, and the enormous undertaking was commenced in July 1777. On 26 April 1783 the society voted him their thanks on accepting the finished work. As an example of high aim, of disinterestedness and courage, this achievement of Barry's is worthy of renown. Its magnitude alone entitles it to notice. It is composed of six pictures, 11 feet 6 inches in height. Two of them are each 42 feet in length, and with the others make up a total length of 140 feet. The subject is ‘Human Culture,’ and the pictures, according to his own description, are intended ‘to illustrate one great maxim or moral truth, viz. that the obtaining of happiness, as well individual as public, depends upon cultivating the human faculties. We begin with man in a savage state, full of inconvenience, imperfection, and misery; and we follow him through several gradations of culture and happiness, which, after our probationary state here, are finally attended with beatitude or misery. The first is the story of Orpheus; the second a Harvest Home, or Thanksgiving to Ceres and Bacchus; the third the Victors of Olympia; the fourth Navigation, or the Triumph of the Thames; the fifth the Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts; and the sixth Elysium, or the state of Final Retribution.’ At the time Barry undertook this work he had but sixteen shillings in his pocket, and whilst he was engaged upon it he lived chiefly on bread and apples, and had often to sketch or engrave for the printsellers at night to supply himself with the barest means of subsistence. ‘I have,’ he wrote in 1773 with reference to the St. Paul's scheme, ‘taken great pains to form myself for this kind of quixotism. To this end I have contracted and simplified my cravings and wants, and brought them into a very narrow compass;’ and with reference to his proposition to the Society of Arts, and his expressed opinions about ‘high art,’ he wrote: ‘I thought myself bound in duty to the country, to art, and to my own character, to try whether my abilities would enable me to exhibit the proof as well as the argument.’ Barry succeeded in his quixotism, but failed in his art. The pictures were absurdly extolled by some, and Boswell makes Dr. Johnson say: ‘Whatever the hand may have done, the mind has done its part. There is a grasp of mind there you find nowhere else.’ This is an overestimate of their intellectual quality; but we may all agree with this sentence in one of Dr. Johnson's letters: ‘You must think with some esteem of Barry for the comprehension of his design.’
The Society of Arts voted Barry sums of 50 guineas and 200 guineas and their gold medal. They also allowed their room to be thrown open for the public exhibition of the pictures in 1783 and 1784, by which he
