A watercolour version of The First Break in the Family (oil on canvas, 35 x 48in.), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857 (no. 264) and sold in these Rooms on 25 March 1988, lot 123. As Mary McKerrow has observed, the picture shows 'the departure of the eldest son from the parental cottage to seek his fortune. The father, mother (on her knees) and sweetheart gaze after him with intense expressions of anguish. A rainbow spanning the sky is an inspiring symbol of hope for a safe and happy return' (The Faeds, 1982, p. 99). F.T. Palgrave wrote of the oil when it appeared at the International Exhibition in London in 1862: 'Even the weather sympathises in its way, and repeats by clever signs the varied feelings of the family; here a gleam and there a shadow, the rainbow on one hand, the shower on the other. All this is ingenious, but it seems rather after the manner of a tale for very young children, where the moral comes in at the end of every sentence' (Art Journal 1857, p. 170). The picture is also discussed at some length by James Dafforne in his article on Faed in the Art Journal, for 1871 (p.2): 'its rich and powerful colouring, the various feelings indicated by the countenances of the figures, its general poetic treatment, with the rainbow arching over the landscape and lighting up the cottage-door from which the boy has just departed to seek his fortune in the world, all combine to make us envious of the possessor of this most covetable picture'