A biographical and critical dictionary of recent and living painters and engravers / by Henry Ottley.

  • Henry Ottley
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A biographical and critical dictionary of recent and living painters and engravers / by Henry Ottley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    eyck] Belgian School. His works are chiefly on reli- gious subjects, or episodes of life treated alle- gorically. In the collection of the King of the Belgians is his picture called ‘ Abundance/ re- presenting a mother with two infants, and painted in the most luscious colour. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1850 three pictures, which, not finding purchasers, were returned to Brussels. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, considering well of his merit as an artist, pur- chased three of his pictures. He met with an accident, falling from a scaffold whilst engaged painting a large composition in the church in La Rue Haute, at Brussels, called ‘ La Chapelle/ from the effects of which lie died in December, 1853. logue of the Antwerp Museum gives the date of that of his death somewhere in 1695. Y. FABRE, Francis Xavier, painter of history and landscape, was born at Montpellier in 1766, and died in 1837. He was a pupil of David, and carried off the grand prize in 1787. He was made a knight of the Legion of Honour in 1827, and a Baron in 1828. His style was severe, his designs pure, and his colour richer than generally seen in the French school of his time. While residing at Florence, it is said that he married secretly the widow of the last of the Stuarts, and of Alfieri ;— and it was here that he painted his finest works :— ‘ The Death of Milo/ ‘ Philoctetes at Lemnos/ ‘ Saul pursued by the Shade of Samuel,’ ‘ The Judgment of Paris/ &c. He was appointed Di- rector of the School of Painting in Montpellier, to which, town he bequeathed an entire museum and a librarv, which are called after him. FABRIQUE, Nicholas la ; a painter born at Namur at the latter end of the sixteenth century ; and died in 1756, by whom there is in the Brussels Museum, a picture representing a young man ex- amining with attention a piece of gold which he holds in the palm of his hand. FAED, John, was born at Burley Mill, Kirkcud- bright, in 1820, and adopted the arts as a profes- sion at an early age ; taking up his abodo at Edin- burgh, where he practised successfully, as a minia- ture painter. He afterwards took to historical and portrait subjects ; his picture of ‘ the Cruel Sisters’ (1851) deservedly attracting considerable attention. Two of his works in this line exhibited in the In- ternational Exhibition 1862, ‘ Job and his Friends/ ‘ Boaz and Ruth/ tended to extend and confirm the reputation which he had long enjoyed north of the Tweed. He is a Member of the Royal Scottish Academy. He was the first instructor of his brother Thomas. FAED, Thomas. There are few instances in Our day of more rapid and deserved advance to eminence in art than in the case of the subject of the present notice. Thomas Faed was born at Burley Mill, in the picturesque stewartry of Kirk- cudbright, in Scotland, in the year 1826. His lather, who was a man of considerable mental powers, and with a genius for mechanical contri- vance which he had no opportunity of developing, there carried on business as an engineer and mill- wright. The beauty of the surrounding scenery [faed and the interesting subjects with which it was peopled, soon caught the attention of the embryo artist, who, in the summer months, when the mill was standing, and there was no grain preparing in the kiln, was in the habit of converting the smoke-begrimed apartment into a studio, where, like a second Rembrandt, with a fair top-light and a dark background, he painted assiduously from the ragged boys who flitted about in the rustic world around him. His father died whilst the incipient painter was yet in his boy- hood, but genius had already marked the family for its own. His elder brother, John, who^ had already achieved eminence as a painter in Edin- burgh, recognised the dawning talent of Thomas, and invited him to his house in 1843, where he entertained him for some years, nurturing the gifts which were so apparent in him. Never was quited as in this case, when the after Associate of the Royal Academy might, if he were asked, acknowledge with pride and satisfaction that he owed in great measure his position as an artist to a brother’s affectionate solicitude. Our youthful aspirant laboured for some years with assiduity in the Edinburgh School of Design, under the tuition of Sir William Allan, and was annually rewarded at the competition for prizes in various depart- ments. The earliest work he ventured to exhibit in public was a drawing in water colours, ‘ The Old English Baron ;’ but he afterwards devoted himself to oil-painting. In 1849 he became an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, and produced amongst other works his justly-admired picture of ‘ Scott and his Friends at Abbotsford,’ well known by the engravings of it. In 1852, act- ing on the advice of his friends, he turned Ins face southward, and permanently settled himself in London. His works exhibited at the Royal Academy attracted attention, and were recognised by the judicious as evincing promise of a high order; but it was not until 1855 that his first decided hit was made in a picture entitled ‘ The Mitherless Bairn/ This picture embodies a touching scene of rustic life, in which an orphan boy is represented asking alms in a cottage, the frugal inmates of which hasten to relieve his wants, displaying every variety of kindly sympathy. It was a work to command the attention of the critics, the majority of whom distinguished it as amongst the ‘ pictures of the season.’ There was one, however, who had for some years been received as an authority, but whose virtue has at length begun to dissipate with the clouds amongst which it was engendered, who went out of his way to crush this rising effort, Mr. Ruskin, in his ‘Art-Notes’ of the year (an occasional publication since discontinued), thought proper to condemn the work as “ throughout the most commonplace ‘ Wilkieism,’—white spots every- where but, despite the prejudice against ‘ Wil- kieism,’ and ‘ white spots,’ the public recognised the merit of the artist, and placed him on the pedestal which he now justly occupies. In the next year Mr. Faed produced a picture in a some- what similar vein to the last, entitled ‘ Home for the Homeless/ and another pleasing embodiment of ‘ Highland Mary.’ In 1857 appeared a still higher effort, entitled ‘ The First Break in the Family/ representing the departure of a youth from the parental cottage to seek his fortune afar -father, mother, sweetheart, all looking after him, with intense and varied feelings of anxiety and
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