George Barret Sr

George Barret Sr was born in Dublin, most sources place his birth around 1730, though some give dates as early as 1728 or as late as 1732. He was apprenticed early to a stay-maker before turning to art, and by 1747 he was studying drawing at Robert West's academy on George's Lane in Dublin, a school supported by the Dublin Society. He went on to study under James Mannin and later taught drawing at West's academy himself.

Barret moved to London in 1762 and began exhibiting with the Society of Artists of Great Britain. In 1764 he won a premium prize of 50 guineas from the Free Society for Large Landscape with Figures. In 1768 he became a founding member of the Royal Academy, where he continued to exhibit until 1782. In 1782, on the recommendation of Edmund Burke, he was appointed master painter of Chelsea Hospital, a post he held until his death.

George Barret Sr died on 29 May 1784 at Westbourne Green, in what is now Paddington, London. Following his death, the Royal Academy granted his widow an annual pension of thirty pounds. His son, the painter George Barret Jr, worked in a similar landscape idiom, and museums including Tate have noted that some works once attributed to the father are now thought to be by the son, so attribution between the two should be treated with care.

Barret was regarded in his own time as one of the foremost landscape painters working in Britain, evidenced by his founding place at the Royal Academy in 1768 and his 1782 appointment as master painter of Chelsea Hospital on Edmund Burke's recommendation. His work is held by institutions including Tate, with further examples across UK public collections indexed by Art UK. Because his son and namesake, George Barret Jr, worked in a closely related landscape idiom, Tate has noted that some paintings once attributed to the father may in fact be the son's work, a distinction that continues to shape how his output is catalogued today.

Barret's auction record is Wooded Landscape with Fishermen Hauling in Their Nets, sold at Christie's London in 2005 for GBP 512,000; the exact day of that sale is not reliably confirmed across available sources. No higher public sale has been identified, though comprehensive auction-database coverage for the artist sits partly behind subscription paywalls and could not be fully checked. As an artist who died in 1784, Barret has no living gallery or estate representation; his paintings circulate through auction houses and specialist dealers in Old Master and British art, and known works are held mainly in museum collections rather than in private trading inventory. Auction appearances are infrequent, so any single result should be read in light of the specific painting and sale rather than as a smooth market trend.

There is no catalogue raisonne for George Barret Sr, and attribution is complicated by the closely related work of his son, George Barret Jr, so provenance and institutional documentation matter more than usual when evaluating a painting. His market is thin: public sales are infrequent, and the 2005 Christie's record is the clearest benchmark available, but it reflects one painting at one moment rather than a broad trading history. Collectors should also expect birth-year sources to vary by a few years, since no exact birth date is documented, while his death on 29 May 1784 is well established across museum and scholarly references.