Price on request

Signed, inscribed with title and date on the reverse; also titled on a label on the reverse: "Our Finest Hour"
Oil on canvas,43 × 106 in.(109 × 269 cm.)
Provenance:the artist's estate, cat.no.34; private collection, Jersey
Exhibited: Jersey Museum,long-term loan,1980s
Literature: Katie Campbell, Moon Behind Clouds: An Introduction to the Life and Work of Sir Claude Francis Barry, Jersey 1999, repr. p.78

Little is known of Barry's activities during the war,but in 1940 he was already in his late fifties and based in St Ives. A committed pacifist, he was in any case too old for active service.This little-known but remarkable painting,his magnum opus, dramatically depicts Christopher Wren's great St Paul's Cathedral,seemingly standing in defiance of the Nazi bombing onslaught taking place.Inspired by C.R.W. Nevinson's dynamic treatment of searchlights in his work,and by Georges Seurat's pointillist technique,Barry has gone further and created this night-time scene by regrouping buildings to form his subject,showing London's major buildings on the skyline, notably celebrating Wren's Monument and his distinctive City church towers. The first major bombing around St Paul's took place on Sunday 29 December 1940,and was immortalised in Herbert Mason's famous photograph published in the Daily Mail on its front page on Tuesday 31 December, which became known as "The War's Greatest Picture". It may well have been the spur to Barry to embark on this ambitious painting,which is dated 1940 on the reverse and, given its scale,must have taken the best part of a year to achieve.

Barry's viewpoint here is the south bank of the Thames, roughly where the current Mayor of London's recently built headquarters now stands, on the site of Bermondsey's Victorian warehouses,and perhaps taken from one of their roof- tops.It excludes Tower Bridge, however, and shows only an outlying part of the Front page of the Daily Mail, Tower of London.On the river, tugs, barges and lightermen's boats busily scurry 31December 1940, showing in front of Robert Smirkey's handsome columned Custom House, but Billingsgate Herbert Mason's photograph Market, to its west, has been compressed.The old London Bridge by John Rennie of St Paul's Cathedral emerging stretches to the left (it was sold in 1968 to be re-erected in Arizona). Its graceful from the night-time Blitz of arches underline the sturdy medieval tower of Southwark Cathedral to the left, 29December 1940 the unmistakable silhouette of the Houses of Parliament, and the tall, slim campanile of John Bentley's neo-Byzantine Westminster Cathedral.The focus of the painting is obviously St Paul's Cathedral, which Barry has relocated for theatrical effect to where the Bank of England stands.To its left can be seen the Baroque dome of the Old Bailey,an Edwardian homage to Wren. Despite his pacifism, Barry has created an extraordinary work, something of a metaphor for the heroic spirit of the British people who,under the leadership of Winston Churchill, defied German aggression.

We are grateful to Michael Barker for the above text and to David Capps, Graham Miller and Robert Mitchell for their assistance.

This painting is subject to an export licence.

Price on request

Oil on canvas, 25 × 31 in. (63.5 × 80 cm.)
Provenance: the artist's estate; cat.463
Literature: Katie Campbell, Moon Behind Clouds: An Introduction to the Life and Work of Sir Claude Francis Barry, Jersey 1999, repr. p.74

'The last fifty years are the most terrible of which history has any record and many of those, myself included, who have lived through them have often wished that they had never been born' (Claude Francis Barry, quoted in Katie Campbell, Moon Behind Clouds, Jersey 1999, p.74).

Barry spent most of the inter-war years etching and painting on the Continent. He had a particular fondness for Italy and it was only with reluctance that, at the start of the war, he abandoned his studio in Milan and moved back to England to return to St Ives.

Both a pacifist and an enthusiast for Italy, it is not surprising that he responded strongly to the Italian Campaign, producing a series of poignant paintings and etchings, especially around the subject of Monte Cassino.Though a victory for the Allies, the Battle of Monte Cassino, which took place between January and May 1944, resulted in appalling lossses: 54,000 Allied casualties and 20,000 Germans. It also resulted in terrible damage to the town of Monte Cassino and the total destruction of the historic monastery. Barry himself suffered a devastating loss during the closing weeks of the Italian campaign: an American bomb exploded in Milan, destroying his studio with all of his etching plates.

Barry was interested in astronomy, and his pictures frequently evolve around scenes of moonlight and starlight. Monte Cassino shows the Plough (Ursa Major) rising above the crosses, with Venus appearing to the left.At first sight a poignantly bleak composition, Monte Cassino, like most of his war pictures, strikes a note of optimism: Venus (symbolising love) is ascending.

We are grateful to Robert Mitchell for his assistance.

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Signed, inscribed with title and date on the reverse
Oil on canvas, 36 × 36 in. (90 × 90 cm.)
Provenance: the artistís estate; cat.798
Exhibited: The Royal Society of British Artists,1944
Literature: Katie Campbell, Moon Behind Clouds: An Introduction to the Life and Work of Sir Claude Francis Barry, Jersey 1999, repr. p.79

Barryís striking image of the Tower of London during the Blitz is closely related to his Heart of the Empire (see cat.36) in its neo-pointillist treatment and the futuristic use of searchlights, infuenced by Nevinson, to heighten the sense of a state of alert for an aerial attack by the German Luftwaffe.And once again he has re-arranged the actual scene for artistic effect in a delightfully romantic way.

The painting's viewpoint is the eastern of the two riverside towers of the White Tower, William the Conqueror's moated fortress located within the walls of the Tower of London,designed to impress upon the population thepower of the Norman Kingís recent occupation of Britain.On the skyline, above the old London Bridge,reading from left to right,are depicted Southwark Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament,the slim tower of Westminster Cathedral,one of the Victorian towers of Cannon Street Station, and Wrenís Monument to the Great Fire of 1666.Inevitably and rightly, St Paul's Cathedral dominates the scene.The left foreground, however, while charming and verdant,is entirely fanciful.In reality, for obvious defensive purposes,the Tower of London always had its feet in the waters of the Thames.The pretty ogival lead-cap with weather-vane of the tower in the foreground was one of Wren's attractive embellishments.As for the picturesque Tudor dwellings shown,they are actually half-timbered and sited on Tower Green,which is due west,not south,of the White Tower. No matter; the image is wonderfully evocative of an ancient city optimistically preparing to defend itself against the enemy, and as such is a work of art, not a dry topographical study.

A boat is shown moored at Tower Pier.Aptly for Barry's subject, and as a poignant coda, this was the departure point, after the State Funeral at St Paul's Cathedral on 30 January 1965, of Sir Winston Churchill.

We are grateful to Michael Barker for the above text,and to David Capps, Graham Miller and Robert Mitchell for their assistance.