1. Francis Barraud is best known for his painting His Master's Voice, one of the most famous commercial logos in the world, having been adopted as a recording industry trademark used by various corporations including RCA Victor, EMI, HMV, JVC and Deutsche Grammophon.
Francis Barraud subsequently established himself as an artist for corporate clients, spending the rest of his career producing dozens of copies of the painting which made his name.
Francis Barraud was born in Marylebone, London, on 16 June 1856 into a family of artists and creatives.
Francis Barraud's patrilineal great-grandfather, Paul Philip Francis Barraud, was an eminent chronometer maker of Huguenot extraction, descended from an old French family that came over to England at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Francis Barraud was educated at Ushaw College in Durham and St Edmund's College in Ware, Hertfordshire.
Francis Barraud studied abroad at Beaux Arts in Antwerp, Belgium.
The original painting is believed to have been created sometime between late 1898 and early 1899, when Francis Barraud filed an application for copyright of his picture of a 'dog looking at and listening to phonograph'.
Francis Barraud was never able to match the success of His Master's Voice and, by 1913, he was struggling financially.
Francis Barraud subsequently developed his own successful enterprise, painting copies of His Master's Voice, many of them for executives and employees of the Victor Company in the United States.
On 29 August 1924, Francis Barraud died in Hampstead, London and was buried in Hampstead Cemetery.
Francis Barraud was first exhibited by the Royal Academy in 1881, with a portrait of George Rose, his maternal uncle, being one of his compositions.
Francis Barraud would become a regular exhibitor at the Academy, as well as other institutions, including the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours.