.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The arms are those of Barker, possibly for John Barker, Esq. (d. 1787) of Goodman Fields, Middlesex. The cartouche has a mercantile theme with ships, a globe and the figure of Commerce, depicted as a woman holding a ship's rudder.
John Barker was the Governor of the London Assurance Company with connections to the West Indies and the sugar trade. Goodman's Fields, where Barker lived, was an area noted for refineries which processed sugar on its arrival from the West Indies. The 1911 edition of Victoria County Histories of Middlesex, vol. 2, p. 130, notes that "The business of the sugar refiner...used to be carried on in the neighborhood of Goodman's Fields, the factories being congregated within a circle of a half-a-mile radius immediately eastward of Aldgate."
John Barker was the Governor of the London Assurance Company with connections to the West Indies and the sugar trade. Goodman's Fields, where Barker lived, was an area noted for refineries which processed sugar on its arrival from the West Indies. The 1911 edition of Victoria County Histories of Middlesex, vol. 2, p. 130, notes that "The business of the sugar refiner...used to be carried on in the neighborhood of Goodman's Fields, the factories being congregated within a circle of a half-a-mile radius immediately eastward of Aldgate."