Born in Carrigtwohill, county Cork in 1864, William Gerard Barry was the son of the local magistrate and a cousin of the Smith-Barry family of Fota House. He studied at the Crawford School of Art, Cork, from 1881 to 1883, before going to Paris. Here he was a student of Boulanger and Lefebvre, in the Academie Julian, from 1883 to 1884, and was also taught by Carolus-Duran. He painted at Etaples in northern France in 1887, and first visited America in 1888. After a return visit to Paris, studying in Cormon's atelier, Barry lived for many years in Canada and the United States. He appears to have died in the South of France in 1941.

Time Flies is one of the best loved paintings in the Crawford Art Gallery's collection. Barry charmingly represents a peasant woman and three children in a sunlit glade. Such a scene could almost evoke a memory of the artist's childhood, in the woods and by the estuary at the Fota estate, county Cork, but the church architecture would seem to locate the picture to northern France. The title of the picture poignantly suggests the passing of life, as the elderly woman watches over the carefree children. The surface of the river gleams in the background. Even the shadows in the foreground seem to mark the passing of the day before our very eyes.

In another picture (private collection), Barry shows an old woman and a couple of children, in grey smocks, sitting before a fire in a dimly lit cottage interior. Such studies of youth and age show the Cork artist's embracing of French Peasant Realism, and fit the pictures firmly in their period. Barry had a canvas, Retour de la peche aux crevettes, accepted at the Paris Salon in 1886, and Time Flies was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1888. He seems to have been poised upon the threshold of a successful career in Europe before he emigrated to America and an uncertain future.

JC]

Lit. - Campbell, 1984 / Campbell, 1989 / Murray, 1992 / Campbell, 1993