Isaac Barré

This portraitback to top

A half-length replica of the kit-cat portrait dated 1785 [1] in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, differing in detail in the waistcoat and coat buttons and omitting the left hand holding the printed proposal for Barré’s 1780 Bill to appoint Commissioners to examine Public Accounts of the Kingdom. [2] Stuart later recalled that Barré, with Lord St Vincent and the Duke of Northumberland, had unexpectedly called on him and offered financial help, which he refused:

‘They then said they would sit for their portraits. Of course I was ready to serve them. They then advised me I should make it a rule that half price must be paid at the first sitting. They insisted on setting the example, and I followed the practice ever after this delicate mode of their showing their friendship.’ [3]
When Stuart withdrew from the RA exhibition of 1786 it was said that his portrait of Barré ‘would have counted largely to the Exhibition in the sum total both of money and skill’. [4]
Another half-length replica, showing the head more strongly lit and a light silk waistcoat, is in the Yale Center for British Art. [5] A small half-length copy was at Bowood in 1954. [6]

Footnotesback to top

1) According to the engraving by Hall; for the Brooklyn portrait, see L. Park, Gilbert Stuart, 1926, I, no.53, illus., III, p 35 (once sold as Admiral Barrington by Hoppner).
2) Engraved J. Hall 1787; W. T. Fry, from a drawing by W. Evans, 1817. A copy by Duke made in 1873 for the American consul general in Paris (letter of 1 June 1873 from General J. Meredith Read; NPG archive).
3) Public Advertiser, quoted by W. T. Whitley, Gilbert Stuart, 1932, p 54.
4) W. Dunlap, History of the Arts of Design in the United States, [1834], 1965 ed., I, p 223 (Stuart’s undated account was given to Charles Fraser).
5) B1981.25.615; formerly at Saltram (Lord Boringdon), later with Lord Amherst; illus. In the Minds and Hearts of the People, NPG Washingon, 1974, p 138.
6) Photograph, Witt Library.

Referenceback to top

Park 1926
L. Park, Gilbert Smart, 4 vols., 1926, no.54.

Whitley 1932
W. T. Whitley, Gilbert Stuart, 1932.

Physical descriptionback to top

Brown eyes, own white hair, deep red-brown coat and waistcoat with gold buttons, white collar and neckcloth; within a painted oval, the spandrels a light grey-green below and darker above.

Provenanceback to top

Given ‘by the sitter to his first cousin Colonel Phipps’,¹ grandfather of Maj. H. Barré Phipps, from whom purchased 1899.

¹ Letter of 1 September 1898 from Maj. H. Barré Phipps, who believed the portrait to be by Reynolds (NPG archive). A Barré Phipps (c.1774-1863) of St John’s College, Oxford, was probably born in Minorca, son of a Capt. Isaac Phipps (J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses II, V, 1953, p 117).


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

View all known portraits for Isaac Barré