'Guilty, or not Guilty'

John was the eldest of the three Faed brothers who achieved fame as artists in the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning his career as a miniature painter in Galloway, he settled in Edinburgh about 1841. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1847, and achieved full membership four years later. In 1855 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in London, and in 1864 he moved to the metropolis, joining his brother Thomas, who had lived there since 1852 and was now a successful Royal Academician. John remained in London until 1880, continuing to show at the Royal Academy and Suffolk Street. He then retired to his native village, Gatehouse, where, still painting, he lived for another twenty-two years.

The present picture is a good example of Faed's fondness for historical themes, often inspired by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. It might be seen as a historical version of Abraham Solomon's two modern genre subjects, Waiting for the Verdict and Not Guilty (Tate Gallery), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857 and 1859, and as it is inscribed on the back with the St. John's Wood address to which Faed moved in 1864, it is presumably some years later than these images. Despite its size and 'presence', the picture has not been traced to an exhibition, but it was among those that Faed sold at Christie's when he retired to Scotland in 1880.