James Barry was a maverick, a genius whose contentious, perhaps idealistic, character induced dismay and then disaster, a popular painter who died in poverty, an ostracised radical whose body lay in state in the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts before his burial next to Sir Joshua Reynolds in St Paul's Cathedral.

Now he is the subject of the biggest solo retrospective mounted by the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.

The exhibition, which will open on Saturday, takes up five gallery spaces, recreating the artist's most famous work for the Society of Arts and reintroducing to Cork - and perhaps to Ireland - the work of a man who left the city forever at the age of 20. In his foreword to the comprehensive catalogue, Crawford director Peter Murray writes that what Barry later became was begun in Cork.

"The key aspects of his art, not least that extravagant imagination that met with such a cool reception in London, his love for classical mythology, his critique of religion, his thirst for knowledge, his pride, sense of victimhood and brooding resentments - these can be traced back to his family history, and to the culture of mid-18th-century Ireland."

Supported by patrons, among whom Edmund Burke was perhaps the most influential and the most loyal, Barry left enduring evidence of his ideals in his mural cycle, The Progress of Human Culture, at the Royal Society of Arts which, according to Murray, remains unique as the only project in which the theories of Sir Joshua Reynolds were realised.Cheered by his students (he was appointed professor at the Royal Academy) for the radical views which later led to his expulsion from that institution, Barry lived in a self-inflicted atmosphere of professional resentment.

This exhibition brings together many of Barry's major paintings which could be moved, along with hundreds of prints and drawings. It is funded by Cork 2005 with the sponsorship of Bowen Construction. The catalogue builds on existing scholarship, as well as essays from new writers. An academic conference to mark the bicentenary of the artist's death will be held both in Cork and in London on February 20th and 22nd, 2006.

James Barry: The Great Historical Painter runs from Oct 22 to Mar 4, 2006. Photograph: Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida (1804) Courtesy Sheffield Museums and Galleries Trust, UK