Charles Burton Barber

British 1845 - 1894

Charles Burton Barber was a painter of animals and genre scenes often with children and their pets. Although his work enjoyed great popularity in its day and he was much patronised by Queen Victoria, Barber remains a relatively obscure figure. A retiring character, he died at the age of 49, and his paintings, never numerous, are now quite rare.

Barber attended the Royal Academy Schools, winning several prizes. He exhibited at the Royal Academy (commencing at the age of 21) between 1866 and 1893 and also at Suffolk Street.

He found many of his early subjects in the hunting field, and was a great devotee of the Highlands; according to his brother, “his love of red deer, and the attraction which mountain solitudes and scenes of storm and mist possessed for him, were quite phenomenal”. Not surprisingly, he was a passionate admirer of Landseer, but his hero's pre-eminence as a painter of deer left him little scope in this area, and he turned to painting scenes of children with dogs or cats. These were enormously popular, gaining wide currency through chromolithographic reproductions.

Barber worked for Queen Victoria for more than twenty years, succeeding Landseer as her painter of animals. Whereas Landseer painted the Queen, Prince Albert and their children, Barber’s task was to paint images of the Queen and her grandchildren with the royal pets. His last picture, completed shortly before his death, was a scene of the Queen and her grandchildren with sundry animals on the lawn at Osborne.