SCOTLAND has just reason to be proud of the achievements in art of her sons, and yet it may with truth be said that these achievements do not, in the eyes of the average Scotchman, rank among the chief glories of his native land. In Scotland, from the very nature of the country and its situation, and in spite of the strongly religious character of the people themselves, the world has been too much with us. We have had to fight for our lives. Jealous neighbours and the keen breezes of poverty, a poor soil and an uncertain climate, have put us upon our mettle, and while we have been, comparatively speaking, victors in the strife against opposing forces, we bear about with us, as a nation, the marks of the conflict. The serious interests of existence have pressed heavily against us, and have made us almost as rugged and unyielding as our own rocks and mountain-sides. Our very humour, as truly a national characteristic

as

our dourness or our perseverance, is in great part the result of a reaction. Our earnestness

must needs have relief sometimes, and as we cannot often sport in the sun, and be "forgetful of the noon

bestow hardly one grateful thought on the painters of genius that our country has given birth to. And yet some Scottish names stand high in the roll of art. We had an admirable native portrait painter before England could boast of one of any note, and the fame of Jamesone has descended to a long line of illustrious successors. The works of Raeburn, of Wilkie, of Phillip, of Horatio M'Culloch, to mention only a few of the great dead, would confer distinction on any school of painting. To living artists of Scottish birth contemporary British art owes some of its noblest triumphs.

Much might be said about the excellencies

tide hour," when we do sing and dance and laugh at our own or others follies we do it with the thorough heartiness and sincerity that are possible only to men who are glad to escape, now and again, out of sight of the hard realities of life. These same realities have left us little time to cultivate the lighter graces, and it must be confessed have also taken from us not a little of the ability to rightly value them. Our most splendid and most self-asserting triumphs have been won in the direction of material progress, and these, consequently, bulk most largely in our own estimation. We remember the manufactures we have started, the harbours we have made, the towns we have built, and we care to

and the defects of the Scottish school; the high position it has taken in portraiture and the impetus it has given to landscape art by its healthy preference of nature and open-air study to conventionality and mere studio compositions; but I must content myself just now mainly with an account of one well-known Scottish artist, who throughout a busy life has worthily sustained the reputation of both his craft and his coun

try.

For three hun

dred years the name of Faed, one of the rarest of Scotch surnames, can be traced in Dumfriesshire. It is derived from the Scandinavian, and signifies a prophet or fortune-teller. About sixty years ago the family was divided into the rich and the poor Faeds, and from the latter branch the subject of this article is descended. Thomas Faed was born on the 8th of June, 1826, at Burley Mill, near Gatehouse of Fleet, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, a district far removed from the turmoil of cities, and one in which primitive manners have lingered longer than in any other part of the Lowlands of Scotland. His father was the tenant of Burley Mill, and was not a miller, but a builder of

mills. His knowledge of machinery and its mysterious ways was profound, and he had a genius for invention; not, as a rule, a profitable kind of genius to its possessor. The result was that all his life he was somewhat of a disappointed man.

There was an artistic bent in the whole Burley Mill family. Tom, influenced perhaps by the example and precept of his elder brother John, now a member of the Scottish Academy, began when very young to draw and to copy other people's drawings. Two bulky volumes in the Burley Mill library, entitled "The Biography of the Bible," illustrated with outline engravings from designs by Michael Angelo, Raphael, &c., were a never-failing source of wonder and delight to the young Faeds. On the walls of their aunt's parlour hung some drawings, which appeared to the eyes of the youthful students to be veritable masterpieces. Once upon a time an uncle of theirs had set off to England to push his fortune, and had returned without the fortune, but with a few old-fashioned engravings, such as "Cupid subduing the Tiger," "Louis in Prison," and others of a like nature. These the uncle had copied in Indian ink, and the copies were given to Faed's aunt. It was in recopying the copies that the Faeds made their first essays in art. Tom Faed also followed out, in his own way, healthier methods of self-education, such methods as a born painter always discovers for himself. In the picturesque scenery of the Stewartry he found congenial subjects for his pencil. Wandering by the banks of Burley Burn, and among the hills and lakes and mosses of the district, and studying the rustic life with which he was surrounded, he laid the foundation of those tastes and sympathies that in later years have helped him to his most satisfactory triumphs. In summer time, when there was no grain to prepare, he used the old kiln-house as a studio, and there, with a fair top-light and a background filled with Rembrandtesque shadows, he had, as sitters, nearly all the ragged urchins of the country side. In the meantime John Faed had settled in Edinburgh as a painter, and by his advice Thomas, in 1842, at the age of sixteen, began his regular art studies in that city. He was soon able to show evidence of proficiency in drawing sufficient to entitle him to admission to the Art School of the Board of Trustees for Manufactures. This school merits a few words of notice. The Board of Trustees was one of the results of the fifteenth article of the Treaty of Union, and was founded in 1727 for the purpose "of encouraging and

promoting fisheries and such other manufactures and improvements in Scotland as may most conduce to the general good of the United Kingdom." An income of £2,000 a year was placed under the management of the Board, subject to the control of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1809 a separate Fishery Board was created, and since then the grant has been appropriated to the School of Art, the National Gallery, and the Museum of Antiquities (Year's Art, 1885). In the year 1760 the Board started a drawing school, which was the first School of Design established in Great Britain at the public expense. In 1858, in consequence of certain changes in connection with the administration, &c., of the National Gallery of Scotland, the Board's School was affiliated with the Science and Art Department, and is now under the charge of the Kensington authorities. At the same time (1858) the Royal Scottish Academy set on foot a permanent life school for the higher special education of those who intend to become professional artists. The Trustees' School, in its day and generation, did good work for Scotland and the world, and to it many of our most illustrious Scottish artists owe their training. Faed had a short experience, in the antique class, of Sir William Allan as a teacher. This extraordinary man, the fellow-student of Wilkie and Burnet, had been head master under the Trustees since 1826. He was also president of the Royal Scottish Academy for twelve years, and His Majesty's Limner for Scotland, and had won fame as an adventurous traveller in Russia, Tartary, Turkey, and Asia Minor. His reputation as an artist has not endured. He told a story with spirit and some dramatic insight, but his colour was weak and crude. He was succeeded, in the position of master of the Trustees' School, by another well-known Scottish painter, Thomas Duncan, whose death at the early age of thirty-eight prevented the fulfilment of the high hopes his admirers had formed of his genius. At the time of Duncan's death his influence was one specially needed to guide Scottish art into right paths, as a bad style, servilely copied from Wilkie in his decadence, was too commonly practised. It remained for others in later years to bring about a healthier state of matters, and foremost in this good work was Robert Scott Lauder, R.S.A., whose merits as artist and teacher have been too soon forgotten.

At the Trustees' Academy Faed gained several prizes. Among the artists still living who were students there, at or about the same time as Faed, are Robert Herdman,

R.S.A., W. Q. Orchardson, R.A., and Erskine Nicol, A.R.A. Looking back to his early experiences, Mr. Faed lately remarked, "Much as the good influences of a teacher may prevail, there is an influence of student over student which is far more conducive to improvement in a class than all the principles and rules laid down by a master. I have noticed in my early student life and since, as a visitor to the classes of the Royal Academy, how frequently a class at a dead low level have been roused from their dulness by the coming among them of even one student of undoubted power, the result being that many were raised to competitive excellence."

Those Edinburgh days were a happy time for young Faed, busy with studies he loved and all his future bright with hope and promise. Merely to live in Edinburgh is to some natures a liberal education. The legendary and historical associations of the romantic town, its picturesque environments, the ever-recurring flush of green that brings the country into the very heart of the stony streets, make it pre-eminently a fit home for an artist. There Faed found healthy stimulus for his imagination, and in addition to learning how to paint, learned to appreciate the manifold beauties of our great literature. With his friend, Mr. R. P. Scott, a poet and a lover of poets, he spent many a pleasant hour roaming over Corstorphine Hill, or on the braes of Arthur Seat, their talk almost always on the one subject, poetry. The influence of these discussions is seen throughout Faed's later work.

The first picture Faed ventured to exhibit was a water colour, representing a sensational incident from "The Old English Baron." Like the majority of artistic aspirants, he began in the grand style, and tried his budding powers on Caius Marius, Siberian slaves, ghosts, demons, and avenging angels. These exercises, however, were badly hung in the Scottish Academy Exhibition, and were never sold. He soon found where his real strength lay; the experiences of his boyhood, the recollections of the scenes around Burley Mill, and the memories of the incidents of rural life that had stamped themselves so deeply on his youthful affections and imagination, began to bear good fruit. Discarding second-hand impressions and all "got up interest in affairs and men that lay remote from his daily path, he set himself to paint what he really felt and knew about, and the result for him was success. He selected simple subject from Scottish peasant life, an old man "Reading the Bible" to a young

a

girl, and he sold it at once for £12 12s. somewhat similar picture was the first commission he received, at £12 12s. also. It had the singular fortune of being refused for no very definite reason, by the gentleman who had commissioned it, and of being sold, several years afterwards, at a public sale in London, for 600 guineas. Faed rose rapidly in reputation: work poured in upon him more speedily than he could execute it, and his life henceforward is the naturally uneventful life of an artist, whose industry and genius have brought to him fame and a good position. Among his more important works at this time was "Jeanie Deans," which was painted for Campbell of Blythswood, and obtained the Heywood Gold Medal at Manchester. In 1849 he was made an A.R.S.A., and exhibited "Scott and his Friends at Abbotsford," well known to the general public through the engraving of it by his brother, Mr. James Faed. In 1851 he exhibited for the first time in the Royal Academy. Encouraged by the reception he then met, he settled in London in 1852. It was not, however, until 1855 that he made "a palpable hit" in the Academy, with a picture entitled, "The Mitherless Bairn." This canvas shows us an incident-idealised-of his own childhood, and the fact illustrates Mr. Faed's general method of working. When the artist was about eight years of age, a little vagrant, on the plea that he had no father or mother, imposed upon the children of Burley Mill, who coaxed him to stay in the house, and fed and petted him until he "waxed fat and kicked," and grew so insolent that he had to be turned away. It afterwards came out that he was not an orphan at all, but the son of two sturdy tramps who were the terror of the district!

In 1861 Faed was made an Associate, and an Academician in 1866. Since 1855 he has every year, with the single exception of 1875, contributed generally two and sometimes three works to the Royal Academy Exhibitions. I must content myself, however, with mentioning a few of the pictures he has produced. In 1857 we had "The first Break in the Family," a young man leaving home and early ties to face the uncertainties of the world; in 1860 "His only Pair;" in 1861 (his Associateship year) "From Dawn to Sunset," which is, perhaps, at once his finest and his most popular picture; in 1864, "Baith Faither and Mither," truly pathetic in its suggestiveness; and in succeeding years such subjects as, "Ere care begins," "A wee bit fractious," "They have been Boys together,"

ness and squalor. This is, at any rate, one way of looking at the world. Life is not with him a mere desperate struggle for exist

That there was once a golden age in which life's glad moments knew no "sad satiety," and the burdens of humanity were light to bear, and Nature was monotonously lovely and benignant, is only a dreamer's dream. The world is as full to-day of grace and beauty as it ever was, to him who has ears to hear and wisdom to understand. As long as men are born and die, as long as they love and hope, hate and fear, there will be poetry on earth, and the artist will find materials lying close to him on which to feed and sustain his imagination. He is the genuine Philistine in whose eyes his gross surroundings bulk so largely as to hide from him the glory of the sunset, the miracle of the new season's primrose, the wonders of human experience. To-day is as interesting as any of the ancient epochs of demi-god and hero. Gordon is as great as Leonidas; there are more brave deeds recorded in James's Naval History than in Homer or Tasso; we have women as fair as Helen and men as chivalric as Bayard. The poet recognises this. To him nothing is commonplace or unclean. Mr. Faed is a poet who uses a brush instead of a pen. He seeks his inspiration in the life of to-day, in the life with which his own childhood was familiar, and he reproduces it for us, idealised if you like, but idealised with a light that is pure and sweet. On one side of his nature he is a realist, but he is no devotee of the ultra-realism now in fashion, which, as Mr. Hamerton says, is simply neither more nor less than a distinct and wilful preference of ugliness to beauty. The rose is as real as an onion. Why should he be called the realist, by pre-eminence, who paints nothing but onions? Mr. Faed chooses his subjects well, draws carefully, composes with consummate skill, and makes every one of his pictures tell its story clearly and powerfully. He deals chiefly with the ways of the poor, especially of the Scottish poor, but under his hands their "homely joys and destiny obscure" are represented shorn of much of their sordid

the poorest among us there enter compensations and alleviations begotten of love, and unselfishness, and faith.

Many competent critics and artists assert that a picture should not tell a story, and that the subject is of no consequence. Well, it may be so to them! We need not dogmatise. The realm of art is surely wide enough to include those who believe that a picture is valuable only for its technique and tone, and those who long to find in a picture something that rouses and responds to their spiritual and intellectual natures. There is nothing final or absolute in any of the methods that even the greatest artists have employed: art is as various as life itself. The truest art is that which appeals most strongly to us and moves our sympathies to their finest issues; and he is the veriest empiric who maintains that there is one and only one road to this end. The essential quality we demand in a work of art is originality. To be of any value at all, the work must come red-hot from the heart of its producer, and be the expression of his own individuality. Imitations are useless; worse than useless are imitations of imitations, and re-echoes of the solemn sounding platitudes of art-cliques. Thomas Faed has always been true to himself, and by force of his sincerity of both aim and execution, has touched our hearts, and at once commanded and enlarged our sympathies.

Mr. Faed is one of the most popular of the brigade of London Scottish artists, that includes so many distinguished men. Success has not spoiled him or weakened his personality. There is a fine sturdy common sense in all his ways and words that is as refreshing as the breeze that blows over the moors and mosses of his native Galloway. Our portrait is taken from a recent photograph by Fradelle, of 246, Regent Street, London.

The illustration, "Seeing Them Off," is a reproduction of one of Mr. Faed's Academy pictures of 1884. Its tender feeling and good composition are in the artist's best manner.

R. WALKER.

withheld her consent to any engagement, she would have done more wisely to forbid the young man her house. The permission to return was more than his modesty had hoped