EDGAR BARCLAY
1842 - 1913

Above, "Approach to Stonehenge" by Edgar Barclay

(If anyone comes across a photo of Edgar Barclay, I would be grateful if you would contact me at carole@woolgather.org)

Victorian artist Edgar Barclay was born in London and travelled extensively in Germany and Italy to study with celebrated artists of the day. He returned to England in the 1880s and enjoyed a prolific and distinguished career as both a painter and an engraver. Barclay was a lyrical painter, mostly of scenes in Wessex. He became somewhat obsessed with Stonehenge, and besides the many paintings of the monument, some of which we show here, he wrote and illustrated a book on the subject: Stonehenge and Its Earth-Works (1895). Barclay believed, against the prevailing opinion of the day, as well as contrary to the position of modern archeologists, that Stonehenge was constructed at the time of Agricola (Gnaeus Julius Agricola (AD 40-93)), the Roman governor of Britannia from AD 77-85. The book contains not only etchings of some of his paintings of Stonehenge, but diagrams and measurements of the monument.

The nine Stonehenge paintings we are presenting here all show shepherds with sheep and a Border Collie. From the sixth century, Salisbury Plain had been a downland for pasturing sheep, but by the time that Barclay was painting, the wool industry was in serious decline, and the Plain was given over to agriculture and military use. Barclay romanticized the Plain, stopping time as it were and returning the Plain to pastoral use. His genius was in handling of the light and "big skies" of Salisbury Plain. You can see that, in the two closeups of the stones, "Shepherd Resting" and Title Unknown, (below) Barclay's rendering is not as effective as it is in the other painings that show plenty of plain and sky.

"Storm Clouds"

Barrows on Beacon Hill, Wiltshire

"Heelstone"

"Heelstone - Sunstone"

"Shepherd Resting"

Title Unknown

"The Shepherd"

"Barrows and Parallel Banks"

"Returning Home"

Copyright 2014 by Carole L. Presberg

For more information on Edgar Barclay, go to the Wiltshire Council
and Edgar Barclay Art Collection at Wiltshire Treasures

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