Life and work thumb|upright=.8|left|Barry, Self-portrait, 1803, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.James Barry was born in Water Lane (now Seminary Road) on the north side of Cork, Ireland on 11 October 1741. His father had been a builder, and, at one time of his life, a coasting trader between England and Ireland. Barry actually made several voyages as a boy but convinced his father to let him study drawing and art. He first studied painting under local artist John Butts. At the schools in Cork to which he was sent he was regarded as a prodigy. At about the age of seventeen, he first attempted oil painting, and between that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he produced several large pictures, which decorated his father's house, such as Aeneas escaping with his Family from the Flames of Troy, Susanna and the Elders and Daniel in the Lions' Den".
Life and work thumb|upright=.8|left|Barry, Self-portrait, 1803, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.James Barry was born in Water Lane (now Seminary Road) on the north side of Cork, Ireland on 11 October 1741. His father had been a builder, and, at one time of his life, a coasting trader between England and Ireland. Barry actually made several voyages as a boy but convinced his father to let him study drawing and art. He first studied painting under local artist John Butts. At the schools in Cork to which he was sent he was regarded as a prodigy. At about the age of seventeen, he first attempted oil painting, and between that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he produced several large pictures, which decorated his father's house, such as Aeneas escaping with his Family from the Flames of Troy, Susanna and the Elders and Daniel in the Lions' Den".