British baronet who devoted his life to painting and Cretan botany. Sir Colville Barclay became the 14th Baronet of Pierston in 1930. He was married to Rosamund Elliott, with whom he had three sons. After graduating from Trinity College, Oxford University, Barclay entered the Diplomatic Service as 2nd Secretary (1938-1941). He then served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Commander.

From the 1940s Barclay divided himself between attending to family business interests (such as a sugar plantation in Mauritius) and painting. After spells in London and Buckinghamshire he settled near Petworth, West Sussex. He also maintained an interest in botany and authored a checklist of the vascular plants of Crete in 1986. He had earlier been invited to contribute to Oleg Polunin's Flowers of Greece and the Balkans (1980); Barclay had met the botanist at Oxford. As well as collecting specimens in Crete, he was afforded the opportunity to collect material in western Turkey on behalf of Desmond Meikle at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and made further expeditions in Cyprus, Réunion, Mauritius and Nepal.

Sources:
Anon., "Obituary: Sir Colville Barclay, Bt.", The Telegraph, 23 September 2010
C.H.S. Barclay, 1986, Crete: Checklist of the Vascular Plants.