Francis Barraud
Encyclopedia
Francis James Barraud was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 painter - the son of artist Henry Barraud
Henry Barraud (artist)
Henry Barraud was an English portrait, subject and animal painter.Barraud was born in London, one of 17 children of William Francis Barraud , a clerk in the Custom House, and Sophia Hull...

.

His most famous work, His Master's Voice, is one of the best-known commercial logos in the world, having inspired the music industry trademark depicting a dog (Nipper
Nipper
Nipper was a dog that served as the model for a painting titled His Late Master's Voice. This image was the basis for the dog and trumpet logo used by several audio recording and associated brands: His Master's Voice, HMV, RCA, Victor Talking Machine Company, RCA Victor and JVC.- Biography :Nipper...

) and phonograph, which is used by several corporations, including HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...

, RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...

, and JVC
JVC
, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...

.

The painting His Master's Voice originally showed the dog (who had in fact died some years previously) listening to a cylinder phonograph. This was a rare model, electrically driven and housed in a distinctive round-cornered case, known as the Edison-Bell Commercial Phonograph and produced by Edison's factory exclusively for the British market,

Barraud probably derived the idea of buying it from Hubert von Herkomer
Hubert von Herkomer
Sir Hubert von Herkomer , British painter of German descent. He was also a pioneering film-director and a composer. Though a very successful portraitist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor...

 who kept a similar machine in his studio. He later replaced the phonograph with a disc machine on the suggestion of William Barry Owen of The Gramophone Company, which then bought the picture. It was used in advertising by the Gramophone Company and by its US equivalent Victor and became one of the world's most recognisable trademarks, although it did not appear on British record labels until 1909.

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