Kathleen Frances Barker

Kathleen Frances Wright Barker, known professionally as K. F. Barker, was an English illustrator and writer of children's books, based in Harrogate, West Yorkshire, England.
Barker's illustrations appeared in at least thirty books, most of which were written by herself. She specialised in ink and pencil drawings, mainly of pet dogs of mixed breed, but also of horses and other animals. For a 1936 reprint of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, Barker provided the illustrations. Besides functioning as book illustrations, her drawings were also sold as prints. In the 1950s, small versions of her dog drawings were reproduced on Stratton powder compacts.
During Barker's lifetime her first book, Just Dogs, was her most popular work, and it attracted the critics' attention when first published. When some book-reviewers mistook her nom de plume to be that of a man, her publisher repeated the error on the dust jacket of her book without contradiction. However, by 1937 The Yorkshire Post had discovered that she was "Miss Barker".

Background

Barker's grandfather, Benjamin Barker, was a weaving overlooker or supervisor. He was illiterate at the time of his first marriage, although his wife was not. Barker's grandmother was Lydia Barker née Robinson, the daughter of Jonas Robinson, a shoemaker. Lydia Robinson was a worsted weaver. Barker's father was the artist Wright Barker, who was born in Great Horton, Bradford. Wright Barker left Bradford and worked as an artist in Edwinstowe and Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, then moved to Hampstead. Barker's mother was Ellen Mary Alcock, the daughter of a Tuxford farmer. In 1914 the family moved to Thorn Lea, 16 Duchy Road, Harrogate, which was to be Barker's home for the rest of her life.
Barker was born at The Beeches, Willow Road, Ollerton, Nottinghamshire, and was the third child of the four offspring of Wight Barker and his wife Ellen Mary. She was baptised at St Giles' Church, Ollerton on 14 April 1901. Her siblings were: Gladys Wright Barker, Doris Wright Barker, PhD, who was a teacher and writer, and Reginald Wright Barker. The 1911 Census shows that in Ollerton she had a governess.
Barker was a sportswoman, and in her youth her free time was occupied with, "riding, beagling and otter hunting", along with her sister Doris. She did not marry, and died on 1 April 1963 at Thorn Lea, 16 Duchy Road, where she had lived for most of her life. Her neighbour, who knew her and received gifts of books from her during his childhood, described her as, "a daunting and rather reclusive old lady... gruff but kind". Historian Paul Jennings said that she became so isolated that when she died, "milk had not been collected and the door had to be broken down". Although she wrote many children's books, and her illustrations were popular, in common with other forgotten women artists and writers there were no newspaper obituaries of her. Her books continued to be advertised beyond the end of her life, nevertheless. She was buried at Stonefall Cemetery not far from her parents and alongside her sister Gladys.

Personality

In her introduction to Just Dogs, Barker speaks her mind about the cross-breed dogs that she has drawn, and about her own attitude to them. At age 32, she is not the retiring and poorly-educated spinster of Victorian popular imagination:

I must reluctantly confess... that the majority of my dog friends portrayed here are, alas, only the ordinary children of ordinary parents; in fact some few among them fail to reach even this standard, but, being the care-free result of some light-hearted and fantastic mésalliance, remain Just Dogs... It is astonishing the pains we take to defend the points of our dogs, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the said points are too glaringly non-existent, how easily and gracefully we fall back on some outstanding virtue in the dog's character, or some engaging little way that he has, and dangle this in front of our critics... And all the old hounds I think will be young again, rousing the echoes with their wild joyous crash of music as once again they're on the line, hunting the elusive otter to his holt in some dark and secret pool; spreading out over the heather in tireless pursuit of a royal stag, and fleeting over the grass on the scent of a game red fox, who, of course, heaven being heaven, would have no objection to being chased.

Career

Between 1933 and 1961 Barker worked as an illustrator, and author of children’s books. Her illustrations, such as Bulldog, the Gamest Fighter of all Time, were reproduced in the Yorkshire Evening Post and The Field Tailwagger. Most of her illustrations represent animals, especially horses and dogs. Chris Beetles of Chris Beetles Gallery says: "Employing pen, ink and pencil, she depicted her subjects with care and affection, often concentrating on their appearance and behaviour to the exclusion of extraneous setting or action". In 1955, Stratton was producing powder compacts decorated with reduced-size copies of Barker's dog studies, and describing her as "K.F. Barker, the famous canine artist".
It was not possible for Barker to find commissions during the Second World War, but she started publishing again in the 1950s. As of 2024, her original drawings continued to be saleable.

Reviews

''Just Dogs'' (1933) and reprints

This early book, published at a price of 10s 6d, drew attention. A Country Life advertisement of 1935 quotes a Glasgow Herald review: "K.F. Barker draws a dog almost as well as Mr Dowd does a child...".
In the Western Mail', the Welsh reviewer Frederick John Mathias, who could at other times be "bruising" and "scarifying" according to Elisabeth Inglis-Jones, discusses Just Dogs in 1933:

The artist possesses a genius for discovering the personalities of dogs and catching them in every place of crime, mischief and saintly endeavour. The result is a picture gallery mostly of rogues, but such lovable, cheerful, waggish rogues, for what the photograph hides the sketch can reveal. But why Just Dogs? Simply because any dog has a place in this popular gallery, no matter whether his pedigree is painful or his ancestors unknown... One glance at this book will reveal its merits... here you see the poses magnified and beautified by perfect draughtsmanship... Every dog in every picture tells in its own way a delightful story.

In 1933, Time and Tide magazine, assuming incorrectly that K.F. Barker is a man, reviews Just Dogs thus:

Mr Barker's clever pencil gives us to perfection the scrambling rush of the terrier, the bounding onslaught of the Aberdeen, the wolf-lke padding of the Alsatian, the spurning pride of the Pekingese. His word-sketches are simple and pleasant and full of kindness and good sense aimed at the selfishness of people who keep dogs under-exercised and over-fed, in city houses and flats. I think his plea for not exercising "Pekes" is, however, quite wrong...

Time and Tide was not the only publication to carry the assumption that K.F. Barker indicated a man. John O'London's Weekly has this undated review: "Mr K.F. Barker has an uncanny skill in drawing dogs. He can put a dog's whole character into the expression in its eye". Moreover, the dust cover of the 1937 reprint of Just Dogs carries that quotation without demur. The same dust cover carries a second quotation – also undated – from the Times Literary Supplement, and part of the same quote was repeated in a 1935 Country Life advertisement:

These delicate pencil drawings, beautifully reproduced, will be a delight to every dog lover; the artist has caught his models on their lawful and unlawful occasions in characteristic attitudes, and has added some obita dicta on dogs and their ways to accompany them by way of text.

Other books, illustrations, and drawings

The Scots Magazine reviews Barker's Traveller's Joy : "Most knowledgeable... an extremely good story of a foal... The book is distinctive for its author's sound knowledge of horses, and for the definite probability of situations. The book is well illustrated in black and white by the author". Of Barker's Himself, the Shrewsbury Chronicle says: The illustrations, from pencil and pen and ink sketches by the author, are charming". Regarding Barker's 1937 book, Just Pups, the Yorkshire Evening Post comments:

It is in the drawings... that Miss Barker excels. Many people have drawn dogs, but few can suggest temperament or mood. And if it can be doubted that in plain black and white it is possible to show a sardonic gleam in one pink-rimmed eye – of a Dalmatian in this case – the achievement is there, with many other expressions and types equally elusive.

Reviewing Barker's The Young Entry, the Gloucestershire Echo says:

Few writers have treated the subject more instructively or entertainingly from the point of view of the beginner than has K. F. Barker... To child riders to hounds, The Young Entry will be specially useful, for it tells them in clear and simple language everything that a beginner ought to know. The book is delightfully illustrated with drawings by the author.

Publications

Note: this may be an incomplete list.