At the Quayside

Thomas Barrett was born in Nottingham and studied at the School of Art. He later returned as Second Master and taught the painters John Bowman, Laura Johnson and her future husband Harold Knight, who all studied there during this time. He regularly travelled around the coast of England to paint his landscape and coastal scenes, and was fascinated by Staithes, where he owned a cottage and painted every summer, encouraging Laura Johnson (later Knight) to paint there and to join the Staithes Art Club.
(see P. Phillips, The Staithes Group, Nottingham, 1993, p.32).