Boy with a Hound

Boy with a Hound from 1850 represents Faed working in the affectionate child-and-animal genre that enjoyed enormous popularity in Victorian Britain, running from Sir Edwin Landseer's celebrated dog paintings through to the sentimental animal pictures that filled Royal Academy walls throughout the period. The pairing of boy and dog carried layers of meaning for Victorian viewers: loyalty, uncorrupted natural affection, childhood innocence, and the shared pleasures of outdoor rural life. Painted in the same year Faed was exhibiting Auld Robin Gray, the work demonstrates his range — from literary subjects drawn from Scottish balladry to fresh observation of children and animals in landscape or domestic settings. The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery panel is an intimate, small-format work suited to a private collector.

Oil on panel with the smooth, detailed finish that intimate small-format works demanded. Panel support allows particularly fine control of edges and subtle tonal gradation in the rendering of the dog's coat and the boy's features.