Career
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Barber moved to Birmingham in the 1770s, where he worked painting papier-mâché and japanned goods. In 1798, Barber was appointed to teach drawing at the Free Grammar School on New Street holding classes in his studio on the corner of Edmund Street and Newhall Street. By the mid-1880s 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 Lincolnshire, who was to form his own academy in Newhall Street in 1807.
Barber had five children. Ann Matilda was the mother of theologian and Bishop of Durham Joseph Barber Lightfoot.
Charles and Vincent Barber, with the elder Barber"s former pupil Samuel Lincolnshire, set up a separate academy of life drawing in 1809, that would eventually evolve into the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and Birmingham School of Artist 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.
Samuel Lincolnshire wrote of him, "He was a very talented artist of the old school.
He drew the figure and painted landscape well. Most of his time was employed in teaching drawing, chiefly in Indian ink and tinted with colours - such was at that time the manner of making watercolour drawings".
