Sir Joseph Noel Paton (Scottish, 1821-1901) Home, ca. 1855 Museum Purchase and Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. by exchange

The Chrysler has recently acquired an extraordinary 19th-century British narrative painting. Home was created in 1855 by Sir Joseph Noel Paton, one of the leading British Victorian painters and a principal member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in Scotland. Paton’s subject was inspired by contemporary history—the Crimean War. As the British press recorded, conditions at the front were brutal; many men were killed or wounded, and for months Britain’s soldiers were hungry, clothed in rags, and short of supplies. By 1856 the Russians had been driven out of the Turkish territory of Moldavia, but the cost of victory in British lives was extremely high.

Paton depicts a Scottish soldier’s reunion with his family upon his return from the Crimea. The battle-weary soldier has just slumped in a chair as his wife and mother, unaware until now of his fate, rush forward to embrace him. His wife had been reading his letters and mending clothes: a spool of thread has fallen from her lap to the floor. His mother had been reading the Bible on the table at right; her glasses lay forgotten on it. The soldier’s uniform identifies him as a corporal in the 1st Battalion of the Scots Fusilier Guards, and a Crimean Medal, with its characteristic three clasps, is pinned to his red tunic. The soldier has suffered serious wounds: his head is heavily bandaged, and the pinned-up sleeve of his cloak reveals that he has lost an arm in battle. His walking stick rests at his feet, along with a Russian helmet, a grizzly battle souvenir. The couple’s baby slumbers in the cradle placed beneath the clock.

Home brims with intense emotion and is filled with realistic and often symbolic narrative detail. The fishing rod hanging from a rafter, for example, alludes to the small pleasures of the soldier’s former life that he will be unable to resume. Yet despite his handicap, the challenges of the future—symbolized by his sleeping child—stand resolutely before him. The open Bible and church steeple visible though the window proclaim the family’s unwavering faith and strength in the face of uncertainty, and the spiritual suffering they have endured for home and country. Perhaps the most poignant detail: though the solder has lost an arm, his wife’s outstretched arm seems literally to replace it. The commitment and love of his family will symbolically make him whole once again.

Born in Scotland, Paton trained in London in the early 1840s at the Royal Academy. Dissatisfied with the city, he returned to Scotland by 1846, where he settled for the rest of his life. Though he lived in Edinburgh, Paton maintained an active presence in London by showing regularly at the Royal Academy and building a long and productive professional relationship with Queen Victoria and the royal family. In 1866, Victoria granted him the highest position in the Scottish arts establishment by appointing him the Queen’s Limner for Scotland. One year later she knighted him. When he died in 1901, Paton was mourned as one of Scotland’s most beloved artists. Home represents a major, early triumph in Paton’s career. He first showed it at Buckingham Palace in April 1856, where Queen Victoria saw it. A few weeks later he exhibited it at the Royal Academy: it was his first submission there. Newspaper and journal reviewers unanimously praised the painting, and the writer John Ruskin described it as a “most pathetic and precious picture.” Queen Victoria referred to it in her journal as the most exciting picture in the exhibition.

Soon after, she commissioned Paton to paint a slightly smaller replica of it, which is now in the Queen’s Collection at Buckingham Palace. Paton’s Home is currently on view in the Museum’s 19th-century Academic Gallery.

—Jeff Harrison, Chief Curator

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