Oil painting depicting 'Edgar Holl as a Small Boy', by Frank Holl R.A. Great Britain, ca.1860-65.

Oil painting, quarter length portrait of a young boy in a grey jumper, wearing a blue ribbon or tie.

Bequeathed by Mrs C. M. Baker through Art Fund

Bequeathed by Mrs C. M. Baker through the Art Fund, 1958

Historical significance: Frank Holl (1845-1888) was born in London, the son of the engraver Francis Holl. He was accepted at the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 15, and in 1863 he won a gold medal for a religious painting. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1864 until his death. Holl specialised in a melancholy, even morbid strain of genre painting, and in the 1870s won popular success with paintings on the themes of social problems, illness and mortality.

In the late 1870s Holl became a successful and prolific portrait painter. This early exercise in the genre is a portrait of the artist's younger brother as a child. It was given to the V&A in 1958 by Mrs C.M. Baker through the Art Fund, along with Holl's painting of a young girl, Ellen Sarah Gibbs (P.2-1958) who was later to become the artist's sister-in-law. Also included in the gift was an oil sketch of the head of a Welsh fishergirl (P.3-1958). The small boy and girl are portraits of Mrs Baker's parents as children.

P.1-1958