A wooded landscape with cattle

In his early career as an artist, Thomas Barker of Bath was patronised by the wealthy Bath auctioneer, coach builder and entrepeneur Charles Spackman, who encouraged him to copy paintings by the Old Masters, launching the artist with an exhibition of his paintings in 1790 and sending him to Rome the same year. The influence of Thomas Gainsborough in particular is evident in his early landscapes, and indeed the present work was for many years assumed to be by Gainsborough himself (see J. Hayes, The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough, op. cit.).