拍品專文
The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856 (the same year as the E.M. Ward, lot 109), with the following quotations in the catalogue:
'His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily,
His clean heart-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary carking cares bequile,
And makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil Robert Burns
'... But for her girl.
And for her little orphan boy, she said -
She had no wish to live; that she must die'
William Wordsworth
The previous year Faed had scored a great success at the Academy with his picture The Mitherless Bairn (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; repr. McKerrow, op.cit., p.96), and Home and the Homeless was conceived as a pendant. It was commissioned for 600 guineas by the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, whose interest in these pathetic subjects needs no explanation. It was, incidentally, at her house in Highgate that Faed met his future wife.
As so often with pendants, there was argument about whether the picture measured up to its pair. Ruskin thought not and the Art Journal too had doubts, but F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum was more appreciative, while rightly stressing Faed's indebtedness to Wilkie. 'His best picture', he wrote, 'is Home and the Homeless, which reminds us of Wilkie, without being in touch a plagiarism; nor is the domesticity that of the stage or the novel. We see the inside of a Scotch labourer's cottage, not that the faces are Scotch, but there is an old claymore lying on a shelf. The labourer, done work, is playing with his youngest child, whom he is coaxing with an apple. The mother, though at work, watches them with delight, while the sorrowful eyes a beggar-woman, at the door, looks on with different feelings, intent on a grief which, like an importunate child, tears at her heart. Creeping up to the table, half afraid, half deprecating, slinks a beggar-child, wrapped in rags, too large for its hardy and unpampered limbs. The glee of the father, and the innocent, thoughtless headlessness of the child on his lap, are really worthy of Wilkie, though perhaps less subtle than the expressions he delighted to convey.'
A smaller version (10½ x 15½in.), signed and dated 1856, is recorded by Mary McKerrow (loc.cit.), and what appears to be another (14 x 20in.) was sold at Sotheby's on 5 June 1991, lot 140.
We are grateful to Mary McKerrow for her help in preparing this entry.
'His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily,
His clean heart-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary carking cares bequile,
And makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil Robert Burns
'... But for her girl.
And for her little orphan boy, she said -
She had no wish to live; that she must die'
William Wordsworth
The previous year Faed had scored a great success at the Academy with his picture The Mitherless Bairn (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; repr. McKerrow, op.cit., p.96), and Home and the Homeless was conceived as a pendant. It was commissioned for 600 guineas by the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, whose interest in these pathetic subjects needs no explanation. It was, incidentally, at her house in Highgate that Faed met his future wife.
As so often with pendants, there was argument about whether the picture measured up to its pair. Ruskin thought not and the Art Journal too had doubts, but F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum was more appreciative, while rightly stressing Faed's indebtedness to Wilkie. 'His best picture', he wrote, 'is Home and the Homeless, which reminds us of Wilkie, without being in touch a plagiarism; nor is the domesticity that of the stage or the novel. We see the inside of a Scotch labourer's cottage, not that the faces are Scotch, but there is an old claymore lying on a shelf. The labourer, done work, is playing with his youngest child, whom he is coaxing with an apple. The mother, though at work, watches them with delight, while the sorrowful eyes a beggar-woman, at the door, looks on with different feelings, intent on a grief which, like an importunate child, tears at her heart. Creeping up to the table, half afraid, half deprecating, slinks a beggar-child, wrapped in rags, too large for its hardy and unpampered limbs. The glee of the father, and the innocent, thoughtless headlessness of the child on his lap, are really worthy of Wilkie, though perhaps less subtle than the expressions he delighted to convey.'
A smaller version (10½ x 15½in.), signed and dated 1856, is recorded by Mary McKerrow (loc.cit.), and what appears to be another (14 x 20in.) was sold at Sotheby's on 5 June 1991, lot 140.
We are grateful to Mary McKerrow for her help in preparing this entry.