A study for Little Cold Tootsies

Mary McKerrow articulated Thomas Faed's child prodigy status when she noted, 'Thomas could paint before he could spell.' (M. McKerrow, The Faeds, Edinburgh, 1982, p. 83.) Faed painted his first oil at the age of twelve and he was made an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy by the age of twenty-three. Investigation of preparatory studies, such as the present work, helps explain the painter's working process. The sketch has been worked up to a relatively high degree of finish and even in this preparatory state the picture conveys the powerful emotion for which Faed's exhibited works were so well known.
Little Cold Tooties was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877.