Interior of a Mill

This stark, somber view of the interior of a mill is typical of the unsentimental depictions of country folk that became popular in England in the early 19th century. Such paintings lauded the noble simplicity of rural life while acknowledging the harsh poverty of this type of existence. Barker of Bath’s depictions of laborers occupy a key position in English art: they echo earlier bucolic views of country life by such artists as Thomas Gainsborough and George Morland, and are precursors of the more realistic, less idealized depiction of rural workers in the works of John Constable and William Holman Hunt. The artist received his early training, copying of old master paintings, through the patronage of a local Bath coach builder. He studied in Italy in the early 1790s and became an expert in the fresco technique; in this capacity he advised on the redecoration of England’s Houses of Parliament in 1841.