Our cover this month, Boating Lake, Central Park by Julian Barrow, sold for $6,000 at Sotheby’s American Art Online auction on July 26, 2019. A British painter, Barrow was a staunch but prolific traditionalist known for his landscapes and cityscapes.
An avid world traveler, Barrow’s portfolio includes hundreds of paintings of the different locales he encountered on his trips. According to his obituary published in The Telegraph, despite living and working for almost 50 years on the artist-centric Tite Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of London, Barrow felt equally at home in the United States, where he captured various iconic places throughout the country in his stunning paintings.
Barrow got his start painting unconventional portraits, showing his subjects surrounded by all their personal clutter. He also was frequently commissioned to paint interiors and exteriors of country estates all over England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States. In 1977, he notably painted a portrait of the House of Lords for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, which is on display at Westminster.
The talented Barrow also had quite the sense of humor. The Telegraph obituary recalls how, in 1965, in what’s described as the prank of his life, on hearing of the theft of Francisco de Goya’s The Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London, Barrow quickly painted a copy of the famous portrait, proceeding to carry it through Trafalgar Square, “casually tucked under his arm, ill-disguised by old newspapers and exciting the attention of the crowds—and the police.”
