| Artist: Francis
Barraud |
| Profile: The
gramophone is connected with the "His Masters Voice"
dog. The story of Nipper began in 1899 when Francis Barraud
went into the Gramophone Company's office in Maiden Lane and
asked to borrow a horn for a painting he was doing of his dog.
He confessed that some years before he painted a picture of
his fox terrier listening to a Edison phonograph and he called
it "His Master's Voice". Since then no one had shown
any interest in it so Francis thought if he put a brass horn
on it instead the drab black horn from Edison he might sell
it. When the brass horn was returned, William Barry Owen offered
to buy the picture for the Gramophone Company, as long as Edison
used the company's improved horn. Francis snapped up the offer
and HMV was born. The dog Nipper had died in 1895 aged eleven,
in 1949 the Gramophone Company decided to honour him and erected
a plaque above his grave under a mulberry tree in Eden Street,
Kingston-on-Thames. Francis Barraud died in 1924 aged sixty-eight
making a good living painting copies. |
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