Saying prayers

Thomas Faed's genre scenes of rural Scottish families were overwhelmingly popular with the Victorian public. In the present picture, Faed's ruddy characters struggle through poverty and hardship to maintain the cohesion of the family unit. A rosy-cheeked mother smiles with simple pleasure as she leans down to tend her baby. A young child buries her head in prayer in her grandmother's lap, signaling to the viewer the family's pious nature. Her exhausted father attempts to read the newspaper, his fatigue made evident in his slouching position and lolling head. This character is particularly interesting because his pose and appearance echoes that of the sleeping, exhausted father in Worn Out, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868 and sold as part of the Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art, Christie's, 19-20 February 2003, lot 15.