George Barret Junior OWS (1767–1842) was one of the principal artists working in watercolour at the beginning of the 19th century and founding member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1804. Born in Orchard Street, London, his father was an Irish landscape artist whose patrons included Edmund Burke. Taught by his father during his early years, Barret was just seventeen when his father died. George Junior and his three siblings all became artists, but struggled financially throughout their lives. After exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1800 to 1803, Barret increasingly focused on watercolour, and in 1804 was involved in the formation of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. One of sixteen original members, he contributed eleven paintings to the first exhibition in April 1805, and went on to exhibit with the Society continuously for thirty-eight years.

Warm hues were the defining characteristic of Barret's style. He became a master of sunlight effects and it is said that he would go to the same spot, morning after morning, to sketch the same view at the same hour on different days, working only as long as the particular effect lasted. Barret did not travel widely and his observed landscape subjects were limited to the Thames Valley and Home Counties, and occasionally Wales. He was strongly influenced by Claude and his later works were usually poetical or ideal compositions, with a clear structure of far horizon, middle distance castle or bridge, and foreground cattle or goats. From time to time he collaborated with other artists, notably Joshua Cristall around 1830.

Barret was influential in abandoning the old theories about monochrome underpainting, which he rightly believed caused watercolours to fade. He sought to replicate the golden tones of varnished oil paintings by Claude and Poussin and in 1940 he published a treatise, 'The Theory and Practice of Watercolour Painting', in which he prescribes his warm colour palette: for skies 'Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Light Red, Pink Madder, Cobalt and Indian Yellow', and additionally elsewhere: 'Raw Sienna, Indian Red, Brown Madder, Vandyke Brown, Brown Pink, Gamboge and Indigo'. In emulation of the rich tones of oil painting, a greater proportion of the paper's white surface would be obscured and scraping would be used to create highlights.

George Barret in 1842, leaving his family in poverty, having spent a lifetime 'striving rather for excellence than gain'. Posthumously, towards the end of the 19th century, Barret's work began to command significant prices and his reputation was at its height. In 1897 the poet and critic Cosmo Monkhouse would write of Barret's work: 'Turner himself could not excel him on this ground (the 'high art' of landscape) and, indeed, it may be doubted if this greater artist ever achieved such perfect irradiation, such limpidity of sunlight, or could obtain at once such elaboration and such purity as Barret in his finest drawings.'