[1] Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Barber moved to Birmingham in the 1770s, where he worked painting papier-mâché and japanned goods.
[3] By the mid-1780s he was well established as the town's first drawing master, with an academy training artists on Great Charles Street.
His pupils there included David Cox, William Radclyffe and Samuel Lines,[4] who was to form his own academy in Newhall Street in 1807.
[6] His daughters Maria, Eliza and Ann Matilda also exhibited paintings and taught private students.
Joseph Barber's own work consists largely of drawings and watercolours of rustic landscape scenes - including pictures of North Wales, which he was the first of many Birmingham artists to paint.