Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Barber, Joseph
BARBER, JOSEPH (1757–1811), landscape painter, was born at Newcastle in 1757. He settled at Birmingham, where after several years of difficulty he succeeded in establishing a drawing school. He conducted this with unremitting industry, and gained in addition a considerable local reputation as a landscape painter. But his work was unknown in London, and he never exhibited in the Royal Academy. He attained to easy circumstances in his later years, and died in Birmingham in 1811, leaving a son, John Vincent Barber, who followed his father's profession. John Vincent Barber exhibited landscapes at the Royal Academy in 1812, 1821, 1829, and 1830, and prepared some of the drawings for the ‘Graphic Illustrations of Warwickshire’ published in 1829. He died at Rome.
[Gent. Mag. 1811; Redgrave's Dictionary of English Artists.]