The Drawing Master of Birmingham Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Joseph Barber spent much of his life shaping the artistic landscape of Birmingham. Before he was known as a painter of landscapes, he was a craftsman, working with papier-mâché and japanned goods in the 1770s. This early immersion in decorative arts provided a foundation for a career that would eventually shift toward the more delicate realms of drawing and watercolor. By the mid-1780s, he had established himself as the town's first drawing master, a position that allowed him to influence generations of artists through his studio…
A chart of Joseph Barber's corpus mapped not by date but by subject. Spokes are what they painted; rings are when; and the threads between stars reveal the patrons and places that secretly connect them.
Each arm of the atlas gathers works by what they depict: portraits, sacred scenes, mythologies, and the scientific studies. Click a spoke to swing that cluster to the top.
Distance from the center marks time. The innermost ring is the earliest period; the outermost, the final years. Style matures as you move outward.
Coloured lines link works bound by the same patron, commission, or theme. Trace a context to watch related clusters light up across subjects.