Edward Robert Hughes

This charming image of a boy shows the artist’s skill at rendering likeness with a few simple strokes of a pencil. The subject, a nephew of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Arthur Hughes and a part-time studio assistant to William Holman Hunt, would have been about fourteen or fifteen years old when this portrait was made. A few pencil strokes representing flyaway hairs perfectly capture the eager carelessness of youth. Only a few years older than his subject, Fairfax Murray could possibly have made this quick study while taking a break from his own duties as assistant to Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. While he exhibited works at the Royal Academy in his own right, Fairfax Murray is better known today as a collector and art expert.