Thomas Barker of Bath

Barker was entirely self-taught and showed a remarkable talent for both figurative drawing and landscape from an early age. When just sixteen he moved with his family to Bath, where the patronage of an opulent coachbuilder named Charles Spackman allowed him to follow his vocation as an artist. Between 1791 and 1793, still in his early twenties, Barker travelled to Italy with the engraver John Hibbert. In Rome he became a close associate of John Flaxman and the two were both members of the Society of English Art Students, a dining club which met on the first Saturday of each month. During his stay Barker filled numerous sketchbooks with views of the city, its ruins and the surrounding campagna, persisting "in going out to sketch in the mid-day sun, until he was disabled by a 'coup de soleil.'" The present work, however, is one of only a small number of oils he painted whilst actually in Rome. 

Clarence H. Mackay (1874-1938), who was almost certainly the earliest known owner of this paining, was a trustee of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. His collects ion, which was put together with the assistance of Joseph Duveen, included masterpieces such as Raphael's Agony in the Garden and Mantegna's Adoration of the Shepherds (both now in the collects ion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Duccio's The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., inv. 1939.1.141). Another version of this composition by Barker, but with different staffage, was sold as one of a pair at Christie’s, 20 May 1921, lot 92, titled A view near Rome. 

Though a capriccio, based on Barker's experience of the Roman campagna, the features of the landscape in this idyllic view recall those of the view across Lake Albano, looking across to Castel Gandolfo, just south of Rome. A popular location with English Grand Tourists, the views around Lake Albano were captured by a number of British artists in Italy, including Richard Wilson, John Robert Cozens, Joseph Wright of Derby, Francis Towne and J.M.W. Turner.