Lot 9: Rabbit catches

John Faed, R.S.A.(1820-1902) Rabbit catches oil on canvas 27 x 18 in. (68.6 x 43.2 cm.)

68.6 x 43.2 cm.

Claire Henry, 'Portrait of the family Faed', The Glasgow Herald, 27 February 1982, illus. p. 8. Mary McKerrow, The Faeds, a Biography, Edinburgh, 1982, cover illustration.

with Thomas Agnew, London.

By the time John Faed painted Rabbit Catches in 1866, he was already a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Faed and his wife were splitting their time between London and Scotland, spending half the year in Gatehouse-of-Fleet. The artist still regularly exhibited at the R.S.A. and sent his works "by passenger train from London in an evening, knowing that he could rely on the railway to deliver them in Edinburgh two days later." (Mary McKerrow, The Faeds: A Biography, Edinburgh, 1982., p. 26). The present lot appears on the artist's inventory, 'List of Some Oil Pictures' and was purchased from the artist by M. Gambart for 90 gns. Gambart began purchasing works by Faed in 1855. This work was Gambart's 8th of 13 acquisitions from the artist. John Faed began his career as a miniaturist, and it is fitting that an attention to detail also lies beneath his larger, later works in oil. In Rabbit Catches, it is through the artist's diligently detailed record of his model that the sitter's quiet confidence begins to resonate with the viewer. The present lot is strikingly different from the artist's idealised portrayals of Highlanders in the countryside. The work is undoubtedly a portrait of his sitter, the farmer Sandy Inglis, who Faed used as a "principal figure" (p. 33) in fourteen works. Faed met Inglis in Gatehouse and the two men became friends. He wrote, "Among the models I employed was Sandy Inglis, a fine-looking old man who, unfortunate as a farmer, had in his old age of poverty returned with his sister to Gatehouse" (McKerrow, p. 33). Inglis waited eagerly for Faed's annual visit. Faed expressed grief that one year, "poor Alec, only a few days before our arrival, had a shock of paralysis from which he finally succumbed. His sister told me afterwards that he was always enquiring if I had come yet. But I never saw my fine old model again. I missed my old friend immensely." (McKerrow, p. 33).