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(3) Thomas Faed
(b Gatehouse of Fleet, 8 June 1826; d London, 17 Aug 1900). Painter, brother of (1) John Faed and (2) James Faed. He showed an early inclination for painting. At 16 he was apprenticed to a draper but left Gatehouse for Edinburgh to join John some time after his father died in 1843. The intention was that he should assist with John’s miniatures, but his success as a student at the Trustees’ Academy, where he won the life drawing prize in 1847, changed his course. The Art Journal [London] praised his paintings exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1849. Two years later Thomas moved to London. The Mitherless Bairn shown at the Royal Academy, London, in 1855 (Melbourne, N.G. Victoria) was an outstanding triumph. The humble cottage interior, the carefully studied expressions and the strong narrative element were features that established his popularity in London as they had for David Wilkie in his Scottish genre paintings earlier in the century. He painted the topical theme of emigration several times. Sunday in the Backwoods of Canada (exh. RA 1859; Wolverhampton, A.G.) elicited a favourable, if condescending, comment from Ruskin. The Last of the Clan (1867; Glasgow, A.G. & Mus.) deals movingly with human anguish and shows Thomas’s compositional strength; the void left by the departing emigrants is emphasized by his grouping of those left behind. He also painted a number of single female figures set in landscapes: Evangeline (1856; Manchester, C.A.G.), the heroine of Longfellow’s poem, was among the earliest and became widely known through the engraving of James Faed.
Part of the Faed family
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