A Farmyard
Francis Barlow (Lincolnshire c.1626 - London 1704)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1667 - 1681
Materials
Oil paint, canvas, gilt frame
Measurements
2540 x 3454 mm (100 x 136 in)
Order this imageCollection
Clandon Park, Surrey
NT 1441516
Summary
[Saved] Oil painting on canvas, A Farmyard, by Francis Barlow (Lincolnshire c.1626 - London 1704), circa 1667-1681. Farmyard and more exotic birds are seen in the foreground, including white-fronted and greylag geese, mallards, chickens, male and female turkeys, and peacocks, with their young. A hog is in its sty at the right, and a broken classical column is on the left. In the background is a wooden building surmounted by a cupola. On top of the barn is a tawny owl, surrounded by other birds. To the left of the bell tower, a red kite pursues a woodpidgeon in flight.
Provenance
Evidently, from the dating of NT/CLA/P/86 (1667), one of the three (but possibly more) pictures by Barlow at Clandon originally painted for Sir Robert III Parkhurst, Kt (dubbed 1660; died 1674) at Pyrford; acquired with the latter by Denzil Onslow, MP (1640/1–1721) in 1677, seen by Evelyn there in 1681 (who said that the hall was “adorned with paintings of fowle, & huntings, &c.; the work of Mr. Barlow who is excellent in this kind from the life”), and left by Denzil with Pyrford to his great-nephew, Thomas, 2nd Baron Onslow (1679–1740) at Clandon, where seen by Horace Walpole in 1764 (who mentions “four or five large and good pictures of animals by Barlow”). “Three large Pictures of Fowls” were listed in the Large Saloon in 1778, but only two were mentioned in the house by J.P. Neale in 1826, though he does specifically state that they had come from Denzil Onslow’s seat at Pyrford; Marked in Lady Iveagh’s 1966 Inventory, p47; Accepted by the Treasury in lieu of Estate Duty on the death of Lady Iveagh in 1968 and transferred to the National Trust (1968 Schedule B)
Credit line
Clandon Park, The Onslow Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Makers and roles
Francis Barlow (Lincolnshire c.1626 - London 1704), artist
References
Evelyn 1955 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, edited by E. S. de Beer, Oxford 1955, vol.IV, p.255 Walpole 1927-28 Paget Toynbee (ed.), 'Horace Walpole's Journals of Visits to Country Seats, etc.', 1760-62, Walpole Society XVI, 1927 -28 pp. 9-80, p.61 Neale, John Preston, 1780-1847 Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. 1818-1826., 2nd series, vol.III (1826) Sparrow 1922: Walter Shaw Sparrow, British Sporting Artists, London, 1922, p.33 Grant, Maurice Harold, b. 1872 chronological history of the Old English landscape painters in oil from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century 1947., 1957 edition, vol.1, p.56, pl.25 Waterhouse 1994 Ellis K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain 1530-1790, Pelican History of Art, Harmondsworth, [1st Pub.1953], 1994 ed., 1962 edition, p.77 Whinney, Margaret Dickins. English art 1625-1714 1957., p.280 Croft-Murray 1962-1970: Edward Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England, 1537 - 1837 (2 vols), 1962-1970, vol.1, p.216 Clandon Park, Surrey, 1964: [National Trust; Pamela, Countess of Onslow] 1964, p.24 Clandon Park, Surrey, 1979: [National Trust; John Cornforth] 1979, pp.26-7 Clandon Park, Surrey, 1983: [National Trust; revised by Christopher Beharrel], 1983, pp.28-9 Moncrieff and Joseph 1996: Elspeth Moncrieff with Stephen and Iona Joseph, Farm Animal Portraits, Woodbridge, 1996, p.31 Clandon Park, Surrey, 2002: [National Trust; Sophie Chessum & Christopher Rowell], 2002, p.34, on the Stone Staircase Flis 2011 Nathan Flis, Francis Barlow : Painter of Birds & Beasts, Clandon Park, exh.cat., 2011