Oil on canvas, 'The Poor, The Poor Man's Friend', Thomas Faed RA, 1867

A composition of seven figures. In the centre of the group an old fisherman in blue coat and buff-coloured trousers is seated towards the spectator outside a white-washed cottage; across his knees lies a net. At his left stands a little boy in a grey coat and red kilt; further to the spectator's right a woman stoops in the doorway over a little child. On the fisherman's right stands a little girl holding her shawk with her mouth. Behind her on the spectator's left a blind man in a brown coat is approaching; he is wiping his head with a red hankerchief. Behind him at some distance a laden fisherman is advancing. In the background is a landscape with a small harbour.

Bequeathed by John Jones

Bequeathed by John Jones, 1882.

The subject of this painting is almsgiving; charitable donation for the relief of the poor. The fisherman seated in the centre of the scene, and surrounded by his family, is mending a net and is about to make a donation to the blind beggar. The beggar is accompanied by a bashful little girl, who here stands chewing the corner of her scarf expectantly.

The scene is typical of the genre of cottage door painting, popular from the eighteenth cnetury and throughout the nineteenth. The setting is almost certainly Scotland, where the artist Thoams Fead staged many of his paintings. Faed himself was blind for the last seven years of his life.

504-1882