Charles Barry - Background and Training

Background and Training

Born on 23 May 1795 in Bridge Street, Westminster (opposite the future site of the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster), he was the fourth son of Walter Edward Barry (died 1805) a stationer, and Frances Barry née Maybank (died 1798). He was baptised at St Margaret's, Westminster into the Church of England, of which he was a lifelong member. His father remarried shortly after Frances died and Barry's stepmother Sarah would bring him up. He was educated at private schools in Homerton and then Aspley Guise, before being apprenticed to Middleton & Bailey, Lambeth architects & surveyors, at the age of 15. Annually from 1812 to 1815 Barry exhibited Drawings at the Royal Academy. Upon the death of his father, Barry had inherited a sum of money that allowed him, after Coming of age to undertake a Grand Tour, extensively around the Mediterranean and Middle East from 28 June 1817 to August 1820.

He visited France, while in Paris he spent several days at the Musée du Louvre; Italy, in Rome he sketched, antiquities sculptures and paintings at the Vatican Museums and other galleries, then on to Naples and Pompeii, Bari then to Corfu; while in Italy Barry had met Charles Lock Eastlake, an architect Mr Kinnaird and a Mr Johnson (later a professor at Haileybury and Imperial Service College) with these gentlemen he visited Greece, where their itinerary covered Athens which they left on 25 June 1818, Mount Parnassus, Delphi, Aegina, then the Cyclades, including Delos to Smyrna and Turkey where Barry greatly admired the magnificence of Hagia Sophia, from Constantinople he visited the Troad, Assos, Pergamon and back to Smyrna. Whilst in Athens, Barry met a Mr. David Baillie, who was taken with Barry's sketches and offered to pay him £200 a year plus any expenses to accompany him to Egypt, Palestine and Syria in return for Barry's drawings of the countries they visited. The major sites of the middle east that were visited included in Egypt, Dendera, Temple of Edfu, Philae (it was here that he met his future client William John Bankes on 13 January 1819), then returning back up the Nile to Thebes, Luxor and Karnak then back to Cairo and Giza with its pyramids. Continuing on through the middle east the major sites and cities visited were: Jaffa, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Bethlehem, Baalbek, Jerash, Beirut. Damascus and Palmyra, then on to Homs, on 18 June 1819 Barry parted from Mr Baillie at Tripoli, Lebanon, Barry having drawn over 500 sketches. Barry then travelled on to Cyprus, then Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Ephesus, Smyrna from where he sailed on 16 August 1819 for Malta.

Barry then sailed from Malta to Syracuse, Sicily, then Italy and back through France. His travels in Italy exposed him to Renaissance architecture and arriving in Rome in January 1820, it was here on 24 February that he met an architect, John Lewis Wolfe (their friendship continued until Barry died), who inspired him to become an architect. The building that inspired Barry's admiration for Italian architecture was the Palazzo Farnese. He and Mr Wolfe then over the following months studied the architecture of Florence where the Palazzo Strozzi greatly impressed him, Vicenza, Venice and Verona together.