[Decorative initial based on an illustration by George Cruikshank.]
orn the same year as Thomas Hardy, Robert Barnes, a domestic and figure painter as well
as a magazine illustrator, was educated at St. Thomas's Charterhouse, at Leighs School of
Art, Newman Street (London), and under W. L. Thomas, to whom he was apprenticed at age
sixteen. Barnes worked first at Sydney Cottage and then from Gossom's Lodge, both in
Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire (just north of London), moving to Elmside, Redhill
(Surrey, just south of London) between 1876 and 1883. There he produced a series of ten
paintings which he exhibited at the Royal Academy, including Grandfather's Portrait (1883), The
Grace (1887), The Maid of the Mill (1888), A Special Jury and A Common Jury
(1890), and Mr. Justice Hawkins Sums Up (1891). In 1888
he exhibited at l'Exposition Internationale 3 in Vienna. From 1893 until his
death in 1895 he resided at Ormond House, Cliveden Place, Brighton. His first published
works were his illustrations in The Cornhill for Frederick
Greenwood's Margaret Denzil's History (1863-64).
In the 1860s he distinguished himself among the second rank of illustrators, although his drawing lacked the originality of such artists as Fred Walker and George Pinwell. Barnes's range was very much theirs, since he, too, was at his best in rural genre subjects. Such subjects occur throughout one of his most important commissions, the illustration of the first serialisation of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge in The Graphic, a London weekly large-format illustrated magazine. In 1876 elected Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society, Barnes contributed to such periodicals as The Churchman's Family Magazine (1863), Good Words (1864), Once A Week (1864), The Cornhill Magazine (1864, 1869-70, 1884), Cassell's (1870 and 1890), The Illustrated London News (1872-7), and The Graphic (1880, 1885-9). His works appear in the collections of the Victoria and Albert and Dorset County Museums, the latter housing six of his twenty original drawings for The Graphic's serialisation of The Mayor of Casterbridge (2 January through 15 May, 1886).
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "A Consideration of Robert Barnes' Illustrations for Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as Serialised in the London Graphic: 2 January-15 May, 1886." Victorian Periodicals Review 28, 1 (Spring 1995): pp. 27-39
Chase, Mary Ellen. Thomas Hardy from Serial to Novel. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Graphic 33 (1886).
Jackson, Arlene. "The Mayor of Casterbridge: Realism and Metaphor." Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. Pp. 96-104.
Created 5 December 2000
Last updated 25 February 2025