Investigating Personal Character: Sir John Barnard – A Portrait and A Present for an Apprentice, Harold Pearce

The most highly influential business book of the twentieth-century was based upon the learning from over 200 years of success literature and was founded upon the principle of the ‘Character Ethic’. Whilst researching the extent of this success literature, it was discovered that in the early Georgian period, Sir John Barnard, Lord Mayor of London in 1737, wrote a treatise entitled ‘A Present for an Apprentice’. This treatise espoused the character ethic through a code of conduct that apprentices could follow if they were to successfully make their way in the world. This paper presents personal character as offered by Barnard and briefly deliberates upon its true reflection of his conduct in life, before investigating whether this character was manifest within the celebrated portraiture of the day, as depicted by Joseph Highmore.