James Barry (1741-1806), a history painter, printmaker and author Irish artist, patronised by Burke, and a member of the Royal Academy from 1772, where he was elected professor of painting in March 1782. He was expelled from the Royal Academy – the only professor ever to suffer this fate – in April 1799 because of the paranoid comments about other academicians he made in his lectures and publications. Godwin attended one of his RA lectures, probably lecture six, 'On Colouring'.

See DNB; The Works of James Barry, 2 vols (London, 1809), William Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) and William Pressly, James Barry: The artist as hero (London: Tate Gallery, 1983).