At the time of his death his widow and children we left destitute, but the Royal Academy granted her a pension of thirty pounds a year.

By 1747 he had started learning to draw at Robert West's academy at George's Lane which was sponsored by Dublin Society, and later studied under James Mannin.

A source of Barret's earliest landscape paintings came from the re-working of engravings of classical Italianate scenes of artists such as Claude Lorrain.

The second is a Landscape with Argus guarding Io, purchased by the first Earl of Leicester and still at Holkham Hall, in which Barret has reversed the image in his painting.

Barret's first major patron was probably Joseph Leeson, 1st Earl of Milltown, who built the Palladian mansion, Russborough House in the southern part of County Wicklow.

[6]Richard Cassels was the architect and the house was furnished by Joseph Leeson, who travelled on grand tours of Europe in 1744 and again in 1750, amassing a large art collection of paintings, sculpture, furniture, and antiques.

A landscape commissioned by Lord Bective for Headfort, Kells, Couty Meath is based on the Tempietto del Clitunno a temple on the river Clitunnonear Spoleto, in central Umbria, north of Rome.

Barret was employed to draw the remains of Killtimon Castle, County Wicklow, and a copy after his drawing survives in the Royal Irish Academy[12] An oil painting by Barret, with a wooded mountainous river landscape with anglers by a waterfall in the foreground and a ruined tower house in the distance, which relates to these views, was sold in 2003.

He inherited Castletown House in 1758 and his wife Lady Louisa Conolly (who was the daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond), set about redecoration and refurbishment of this Palladian mansion.

He also painted a number of pictures of animals such as the water spaniel belonging to Lord Edward Bentinck, that was exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1768.

The connection was through Edmund Burke, Rockingham's private secretary and prominent Rockinghamites who commissioned paintings from Barrett were the Duke of Portland, the Earl of Albemarle and Sir George Colebrook.

[19] It is noticeable that many of the landowners who patronised Barret were in the process of building impressive new mansions which would require large oil paintings to decorate the reception rooms.

The Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, Sir Peter Byrne Leicester at Tabley House and the Marquess of Rockingham were all employing Carr of York as an architect and this may provide a link between his early commissions after Barret arrived from Ireland.

They were a conscious attempt at providing a native British type of landscape composition in opposition to Richard Wilson's Italianising patterns.

[24] George Keppel, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, a noted military commander and another prominent member of the Rockingham Whigs was also a patron of Barret.

These include A view looking east towards Knipe Scar from Lowther Park, where the sportsmen in the painting were the work of Philip Reinagle and the dogs are by George Stubbs.

William Lock, a connoisseur and art critic, commissioned Thomas Sandby in 1774 to build a new house for him at Norbury Park near Mickleham in Surrey.

[30] Eight painted pilasters appear to support a leafy arbour of trellis work, open to the sky: and on the walls of the room are views of distant countryside.

This a typical late Barret, similar to the Southwick Park and Burton Constable paintings, with the house placed towards the centre and framed with trees to the side.

[35] In 1781 Barret exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy of a View of Windermere Lake in Westmoreland, the effect, the sun beginning to appear in the morning, with the mists breaking and dispersing.

George Barret produced a notable series of paintings of scenery in Wales, some of which have considerable similarity to views by Richard Wilson.

In the summer of 1777 Henry Penruddocke Wyndham made his second tour through Wales accompanied by the Swiss artist Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, who is very likely to have known Barret.

[39] The Government Art Collection has oil-paintings by Barret of both the Severn and Wye confluence and Cilgerran Castle on the borders of Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire.

Stratford of Baltinglass, County Wicklow (who became Earl of Aldborough) who was developing the land belonging to the City of London Corporation, called the Lord Mayor's Banqueting House Ground.

According to a story published in 1783, Stratford had learned of the site from Barret, then resident in Orchard Street, whom he had consulted 'about purchasing or building a town house'.

James Barret succeeded his father as the master painter of Chelsea Hospital and exhibited oils and watercolours at the Royal Academy between 1785 and 1819.

They are painted with great fluency.....The bold blueness of their skies, though usually now much faded, excites much admiration, when the distaste of the eighteen century for primary colour in landscape is remembered.

Barret has included an elegant group of figures enjoying a picnic on Soulby-Fell on the right of the composition; a ferry transports more tourists and their horses across the lake to the base of this hill.

In 1920 Thomas Bodkin, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland wrote an impassioned plea that greater prominence should be given to Barret's work.

On the art market, the auction record for a work by George Barret, Sr. was set in 2005, when the painting, Wooded Landscape with Fishermen Hauling in Their Nets, was sold at Christie's, London, for £512,000.