JAMES BARRY, R.A. (1741--1806), who was a contemporary of Benjamin West, and, like him, aimed at high art, formed a marked contrast to the favourite painter of George III. Whilst West was well fed and well clothed, rich, easy-tempered, and happy, Barry was often ragged, sometimes starving, always poor, and seldom out of a passion. He was born at Cork, the son of a small coasting trader who kept a tavern. From such uncongenial surroundings Barry made his way to Dublin, and exhibited _The Baptism of the King of Cashel by St. Patrick_. This work attracted considerable notice, and secured for the artist the patronage of Burke, who sent him to Italy. This was in 1765, but previously to this date Barry had already visited London, and lived by copying in oil the drawings of "Athenian Stuart," the Serjeant-Painter who succeeded Hogarth. Barry's studies in Italy confirmed his ambitious design to become a painter of high art subjects. With characteristic boldness he entered the field against the greatest masters, and whilst at Rome painted _Adam and Eve_, which he thought superior to Raphael's masterpiece of the same subject. Returning to England in 1770, Barry exhibited this picture, and began _Venus rising from the Sea_, which was exhibited in 1772; he was elected a R.A. in the following year. His undisciplined temper ensured him many enemies, and estranged his few friends; he even quarrelled with Burke. His pride and courage were indomitable, and he worked on through good and ill reports, never swerving from the course he had marked out, and contemptuously dismissing any chance sitter for a portrait to "the fellow in Leicester Square," as he styled Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1777, Barry undertook to paint in the Great Room of the Society of Arts at the Adelphi a series of pictures illustrating _Human Culture_. He had previously offered to decorate the interior of St. Paul's. He began to work at the Adelphi with sixteen shillings in his pocket, and toiled there during seven years, being often in absolute want. The Society provided him with models and materials only, and Barry was to receive the proceeds of exhibiting his work in return for his unpaid labours. The hope of fame enabled "the little ordinary man with the dirty shirt" to support himself through the long years of want and semi-starvation, whilst he was working for the glory which never came. Barry finished the pictures at the Adelphi in 1783, and called them severally _The Story of Orpheus: A Thanksgiving to Ceres and Bacchus_; _The Victors of Olympia_; _Navigation, or the Triumph of the Thames_; _Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts_; and _Elysium, or the State of Final Retribution_. The luckless artist had been appointed Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy in 1772, but outbursts of passion and furious attacks on his brethren led to his removal from the post, and, in 1779, to his expulsion from the Academy. He died miserably, in 1806, at the wretched