as "Fruit and Flower Painter" is inadequate. Only a small number of exhibited works are "flower pieces". The great majority of recorded Barney's works are religious, historic, literature, and genre paintings, which express his strong ambition to become a historic painter. While the Silver Palette of 1774 was given for his early flower designs, the Gold Palette was awarded to him in 1781 for his historical drawings. Working for Matthew Boulton: mechanical paintings Barney returned to Wolverhampton in about 1779, as in August 1779 he married Jane Whiston Chambers (or Chandler) at St John's chapel, Wolverhampton. In October 1780, their first child was born. It was imperative to obtain means to support his new family. No later than in November 1779 he started to collaborate with Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) and his Soho manufactory, assisting in the production of so-called mechanical paintings. His duties were to touch and finish in paint images of original paintings which were mechanically reproduced on paper or canvas. He worked on paintings after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Joseph Wright of Derby, Antonio Zucchi and Angelica Kauffman. All paintings associated with Joseph Barney from the Soho period, be it mechanical or original, are figurative. Many of them, like Benjamin West's and Angelica Kauffman's works, are complex many-figures compositions. Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood both possessed mechanical paintings finished by Barney. Other customers were Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), Sir Sampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley(1744–1824); possibly, Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of Chester and a well-known abolitionist (1731–1809); Lord Macclesfield and, possibly, Isaac Hawkins Browne. Independent artist In 1781, Boulton was ceasing the production of mechanical paintings, thus Barney's collaboration with Soho manufactory finished. In 1784, Barney still was in the Midlands, painting his second altar piece, The Apparition of Our Lord to St Thomas, for St Peter & St Paul's Roman Catholic church, and exhibiting at the Royal Academy from Summer Hill, Birmingham. Between 1786 and 1793, he lived in London, at 29, Tottenham Street, actively exhibiting figurative and historic paintings at the Royal Academy, although The London Book Trade names him as an engraver and print-seller. His Scene in the ‘Tempest, exhibited in 1788, might indicate his ambition to join the Boydell's Shakespeare Project in which his friends Benjamin West and Angelica Kauffman participated. During this time period, one of Barney's apprentices was William Armfield Hobday, (1771-1831), who later was an eminent court painter. In October 1793