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Lot Essay
Charles Burton Barber specialized in scenes of children with animals, and from 1866 to 1893 he exhibited thirty-two works at the Royal Academy. During this period Queen Victoria and Prince Albert commissioned the artist to paint pictures of their grandchildren and favorite pets. In this he inherited Landseer's mantle, and like Landseer, his first love was the Highlands of Scotland where he was raised, but he found that subjects such as the present example proved more commercially attractive to the picture buying public.
A Special Pleader (fig. 1) was painted the year after A Secret Place and features the same little girl and collie. The present lot illustrates the girl, clearly without permission, delving into a secret hiding place known only by herself and her loyal companion. In A Special Pleader, which follows our heroine's story, her secret has been discovered and she stands in shame against the wall with the collie looking into the near foreground pleading on her behalf for her release from punishment.
The composition has been carefully constructed to illustrate the fashionable aesthetic taste of the day. Our heroine and her companion perch on a George II side chair as she reaches into an oriental cabinet. The rich exoticism is further conveyed through the vivid golden floral wallpaper, the elaborately upholstered pouf, the intricately carved frame and the sumptuous Persian rug. The addition of a dried palm leaf, displayed above a framed landscape, provides further hints of the East.
(fig. 1) Charles Burton Barber, A Special Pleader, 1893. © Rochdale Art Gallery, Lancashire, UK / Bridgeman Images.
A Special Pleader (fig. 1) was painted the year after A Secret Place and features the same little girl and collie. The present lot illustrates the girl, clearly without permission, delving into a secret hiding place known only by herself and her loyal companion. In A Special Pleader, which follows our heroine's story, her secret has been discovered and she stands in shame against the wall with the collie looking into the near foreground pleading on her behalf for her release from punishment.
The composition has been carefully constructed to illustrate the fashionable aesthetic taste of the day. Our heroine and her companion perch on a George II side chair as she reaches into an oriental cabinet. The rich exoticism is further conveyed through the vivid golden floral wallpaper, the elaborately upholstered pouf, the intricately carved frame and the sumptuous Persian rug. The addition of a dried palm leaf, displayed above a framed landscape, provides further hints of the East.
(fig. 1) Charles Burton Barber, A Special Pleader, 1893. © Rochdale Art Gallery, Lancashire, UK / Bridgeman Images.