Take five: highlights about a record image
FRANCIS BARRAUD (1856– 1924) is a paradox. His name has all but disappeared from Britain’s collective memory, but a painting by him remains one of the world’s most widely recognised pictures more than 100 years later.
1. Barraud came from a family of artists—his father, Henry, and uncle William were noted animal painters—and he followed in their footsteps, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy
2. He lived with his late brother’s fox terrier, Nipper, and thought it would be fun to paint the little dog listening to an Edison phonograph. However, his attempts to sell the picture, titled His Master’s Voice, failed. Even the head of Edison Bell rejected it, on the grounds that ‘dogs don’t listen to phonographs’
3. In 1899, four years after Nipper’s death, Barraud asked the bemused director of the Gramophone Company in Britain, William Barry Owen, whether he could borrow a brass horn. His plan, according to Roland Gelatt’s The fabulous phonograph, 1877–1977, was to rework his painting, replacing the oldfashioned device with a shiny new one. Owen not only agreed, but offered to buy the artwork on condition that Barraud paint in an Improved Gramophone model
4. His Master’s Voice became the logo first of phonograph manufacturer Victor, then of the Gramophone Company’s own record label, HMV, to which it also lent the name. When the flagship HMV shop opened on London’s Oxford Street in 1921, Barraud attended the inauguration
5. Despite the enormous popularity of his picture, the painter hit some rocky times, but the Gramophone Company didn’t forget him. It commissioned from him a replica of His Master’s Voice and later paid him a pension until he died on August 29, 1924 (not before painting a miniature copy of his celebrated picture for Queen Mary’s dolls’ house; ‘Life in miniature, March 13)