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Only around a dozen life drawings by James Barry have survived despite leaving more than two hundred of them in his studio at the time of his death. This is one of two now at the Center (the other B1977.14.5752) and was made around 1777 when Barry began a cycle of paintings celebrating the 'Progress of Human Culture' to decorate the Great Room of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London. Barry conceived the cycle in six parts, all the paintings executed in situ on vast canvases for which he was paid nothing but his materials and expenses. He was given £15 by the Society on March 5, 1777 to pay his male and female models in preparing his paintings. This life study was made for the figure of Hercules whom Barry represented as a fictive statue to the left hand side of his third canvas, the 'Crowning of the Victors'. In his choice of pose Barry eschewed the most celebrated representation of Hercules, the Hellenistic 'Farnese Hercules', in favor of a more vigorous figure with the hero crushing envy beneath his foot; he later explained that his Hercules represented the strength of body exalted by the ancient Greeks, a fictive statue of Minerva at the other end of the canvas representing strength of mind. The model was presumably a manual laborer rather than a professional model for he was engaged and paid directly by Barry, not wanting his identity to be revealed to the Secretary of the Society of Arts.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2014