John Faed (Brittish painter) 1819 - 1902
Born three months after Queen Victoria, John was the eldest son of the six children of James Faed, tenant of Barlay Mill, Galloway, and Mary née McGeoch. Two other sons, Thomas, and James, also became artists. Until the age of eleven John attended Girthon Parish School, and the Castle Douglas Weekly Visitor for 19 August 1831 recorded that at the examination of Girthon school "the company present were shown a beautiful and correct book of maps, executed by John Faed, as a specimen of his many and varied drawings, which often ere now have elicited the admiration of all who have seen them". Faed primarily painted religious, literary, and historical scenes. He exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy almost continually. When he was President of the Kirkcudbrightshire Fine Art Association in 1899, his portrait of Sir Isaac Newton (painted when Faed was 36) was shown in the Dalbeattie Loan and Industrial Exhibition which took place in July and August that year. John Faed also had a following in the USA; his portrait of George Washington taking the Salute at Trenten was so popular that it was selected to illustrate an article on Washington in the Magazine of American History in 1880. His highly successful painting Shakespeare and his Friends at the Mermaid Tavern was sold to an American in 1851. His paintings, popular in Victorian Britain, can today be found in private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Scotland. He was an active member of the community where he finally made his home, Gatehouse of Fleet. He helped to conceive and develop a number of community projects, such as the clock tower, and the town hall which was opened in August 1885 by Thomas Faed, by then a celebrated Academician. In the summer of 1902 John Faed became seriously ill, and died on 22 October at the age of eighty-three. He was buried beside his wife, Jane, in the new Girthon parish churchyard. The known titles of his works amount to 278 items. Of this total 241 were hung in the Royal Scottish Academy, twenty of these were exhibited in the Royal Academy, in addition to the nineteen exhibited in the Royal Academy only. The list is thought to be incomplete. * * * James Faed (British painter) 1821 - 1911 James Faed was one of three famous Scottish brother painters/artists. James was the second son of the six children of James Faed, tenant of Barlay Mill, near Gatehouse of Fleet, Galloway, and Mary née McGeoch. Two of his brothers, John and Thomas also became artists. In his early years his father thought James had a marked talent for engineering. When he was sixteen he built a dinghy in one of the outhouses at Barlay Mill, taking him a year. At seventeen he went to Maryport with his father and brother John. While John was painting miniatures, James did the same work as hs father's men. However, with his father's death and his work at Barlay Mill virtually at an end, James, in 1846, joined his two brothers, John and Thomas, who were living at South West Circus Place in Edinburgh. James began to paint fine landscapes, miniatures, and portraits in oils and watercolours and became a regular exhibitor at the Royal Scottish Academy for twenty years. His watercolour Coast Scene on the Colvend Coast is in the Aberdeen Art Gallery. Two of his miniatures, Isabella Lockhart Robertson and Miss Mary Duncan (both now in private hands) are particularly fine. Introduced to the mezzotint engraver, John Bonnar, James became interested in a more rapid process for preparing the plate for the engraver - possibly the engineering streak in him his father noticed. He also developed an intense interest in mezzotinting and soon began his career in that art and as an engraver in general. As a mezzotinter, for over fifty years, he was possibly only excelled in his day by Samuel Cousins (1801–1887). Several of Faed's mezzotints were commissioned by the Royal Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Scotland. About 1871 James went to Australia in order to visit his brother William, who had emigrated, and stayed at Stony Park, Brunswick, the home of Theodotus John Sumner. When that house was later destroyed by fire, a record discovered mentioned that many engravings of cottage life, and proofs, by James Faed, were lost in the fire, but that some which survived were hung in the dining room of the rebuilt house. His engravings of portraits became widely in demand and his first patron was John Watson Gordon who in 1850 became President of the Royal Scottish Academy and Her Majesty's Limner for Scotland. Faed engraved at least one hundred and thirty three plates, one of which was a Royal Commission for the painting of Queen Victoria and Prince Arthur, by Winterhalter, and his last commission was a portrait of the Countess of Seafield which was hung in the Royal Academy in 1877. The last engraving James Faed undertook, at the age of eighty, was a portrait of the Earl of Home, father of the future Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1899 and James received £159/10/- for the commission. He died suddenly while eating his lunch at 7 Barnton Terrace, Edinburgh, in his ninety-first year. His wife Mary had died in 1887 at the age of sixty. * * * Thomas Faed (Brittish painter) 1826 - 1900 Thomas Faed was a Scottish painter who is said to* have done for Scottish art what Robert Burns did for Scottish song. Faed was born on 8 June 1826, in Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, and was the brother of John Faed. He received his art education in the school of design, Edinburgh and was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1849. He went to London three years later, was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1861, and academician in 1864, and retired in 1893. He had much success as a painter of domestic genre, and had considerable executive capacity. Three of his pictures, The Silken Gown, Faults on Both Sides, and The Highland Mother are in the Tate Gallery and a further two, Highland Mary and The Reaper hang in the Aberdeen Art Gallery. The Last of the Clan, completed in 1865 and arguably his best known work, is in the Kelvingrove Gallery in Glasgow. He produced several versions of this work, including a smaller version now in The Fleming Collection. He died in London on 17 August 1900.
