Thirkleby, North Yorkshire: Lucette Barker 1856
This painting forms part of a very charming collection of watercolours attributed to Lucette Elizabeth Barker (1816–1905) that we have for sale. The watercolours all depict the landscape around Thirkleby in North Yorkshire, and although unsigned, annotations on the paintings suggest that they are by a female hand (she writes of a 'little walk with father').
Barker was born in Thirkleby in Yorkshire to Thomas Barker, a vicar, amateur musician and painter, and his wife Jane Flower. She had three sisters, two of whom also became artists while the third was a composer. She had a cultured upbringing: Thomas Barker taught his daughters to paint and draw and arranged private art lessons for them, and numerous musicians would visit their home, including the violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini. The local manor was Thirkleby Hall, the home of the artist Sir Robert Frankland-Russell, 7th Baronet, of which our artist was no also doubt aware. Thomas Barker was, however, opposed to Lucette working for a living, but in spite of this she did undertake commercial work. In 1851 she provided illustrations for the book 'The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales' by Margaret Getty, and between 1853 and 1874, she exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Dudley Gallery. In 1855 Lucette moved to London to live with her married sister, Laura, who was a composer. In London she moved in the artistic circles associated with Holland House, which included the actress Ellen Terry and the artist George Frederic Watts. Visitors to their London home included Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Henry Irving and Lewis Carroll.
Taken as a whole, the paintings are a visual diary of the rural environment—often noting the month, time of day and weather conditions. We witness haymaking, horse riding, sunset and sunrise—the North Yorkshire landscape being a constant throughout.
An intimate affection for local landscape was a feature of the work of some of the greatest British landscape painters of the 19th century. On one of the watercolours our artist has written a quotation from the Life of Constable: 'and walk in the <em>same fields</em> all the days of my life'. These paintings seem to celebrate this ethos and Constable's own assertion regarding his own Suffolk landscape, that 'I should paint my own places best ... painting is but another word for feeling'.
