George Barret, R.A. (1732-1784)

George Barret was one of the best known Irish landscape painters if his generation. He was born in Dublin, where he trained, but moved to London, in 1762, where he hoped to find a wider market for his work. He sent a View of the Waterfall at Powerscourt and a View in the Dargle, both of which he had painted in Ireland, along with other landscapes, to the exhibition at the Society of Artists in 1764 and in the same year gained the premium of fifty pounds given by the society for the best landscape. His compatriot and fellow artist James Barry, R.A., wrote in a letter of 1765, that: 'my friend and fellow countryman, James Barret, does no small honour to landscape painting among us; I have seen nothing to match his last year's premium picture'. Barret's landscapes were widely admired and fashionable in aristocratic circles and he earned a considerable income from his pictures although it was never enough to balance his extravagance.