Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Barber, Charles (d.1854)
BARBER, CHARLES (d. 1854), landscape painter, was a native of Birmingham, and moved to Liverpool in early life on being appointed teacher of drawing in the Royal Institution. He was intimately connected with the various associations established in Liverpool in his lifetime. He was among the earliest members and most frequent contributors of the Literary and Philosophical Society, and assisted to found the Architectural and Archæological Association. Thomas Rickman found much support and encouragement from him in his early studies of Gothic architecture, and for years his house was the centre of the intellectual society of Liverpool. Among his nearest friends he numbered Traill and Roscoe. As a landscape painter he was a close observer of nature, and endeavoured to reproduce effects of mist and sunshine with accuracy. He exhibited three times in the Royal Academy, and was a regular contributor to local exhibitions. In spite of a severe attack of paralysis, he continued to practise his art to the end, and his two best-known pictures, ‘Evening after Rain,’ and ‘The Dawn of Day,’ were exhibited in Trafalgar Square in 1849. He was elected president of the Liverpool Academy some years before his death, which occurred in 1854.
[Liverpool Courier, 1854; Redgrave's Dictionary of English Artists.]