James Barry (1741-1806) was born in Cork, the son of a sailor. A precocious talent was fostered by lessons from Cork landscape painter John Butts and while he was studying in Dublin, his painting The Baptism of the King of Cashel by St Patrick was bought for the Irish House of Commons.

The patronage of Edmund Burke sent him to London, where he was befriended by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and he also travelled to Paris, Rome and Florence. On his return to London in 1771, he exhibited at the Royal Academy where he later became a member. As as evangelist of the history painting genre, he was much influenced by Burke's writing, though they were later estranged.

Supporting himself by print- making, he was commissioned to decorate the Great Room of the Society of Arts, completed to great acclaim by 1790. He had become Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy but continued to challenge the academy's own policies and practices, and he was finally expelled - the only artist ever to be so treated (until Brendan Neiland, a month ago).

Eccentric, paranoid and radical he may have been, yet his fame was such that his body lay in state at the Society of Arts and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

The James Barry exhibition at the Crawford will run from October 2005 to the bicentenary of his death in February 2006. The lavishly illustrated catalogue from Gandon Editions will include essays by biographer William Pressly.

The Barry Project committee is headed by UCC's Emeritus Professor of History, Tom Dunne. A conference will be held in two venues: the Crawford Gallery on February 20th and 21st 2006 and the Royal Society of Arts in London on February 22nd.