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His Master’s voice

Francis Barraud

Nipper and His Master’s Voice

The famous Nipper picture as revised for the Gramophone Company, from an oleograph

For much of the 20th century, one of the world’s most famous trade marks was a picture of a small terrier staring into the brass trumpet of a primitive gramophone. “His Master’s Voice” read the caption.

The picture was painted, probably in 1898, by the Huguenot artist Francis Barraud; the dog, ‘Nipper’ (he tended to nip people’s legs), had belonged to his elder brother Mark but was inherited by Francis on Mark’s death. Nipper himself had died, in 1895, before the picture was painted. Originally, the dog was shown listening to a cylinder phonograph, on which the user could record his own voice; thus, Nipper could have heard the voice of his master emerging from the trumpet. As Gramophones played only pre-recorded discs, a dog could hear only a master who happened to be a recording artist.

The story goes that Barraud offered his picture to the Edison Bell company (responsible for the phonograph in question), but they rather sniffily turned their nose up at the idea. Then a friend suggested that Barraud improve the picture with one of the brass horns used by the new Gramophone Company, so the artist approached them at their offices in Maiden Lane, off the Strand, for the loan of a brass horn to copy. “Yes, certainly”, was their response, “and if you replace the phonograph with a Gramophone, we will buy the picture.”

The Gramophone Company took delivery of the revised picture in October 1899; they paid Barraud £100 (£50 for the painting and £50 for the Copyright). Barraud had copyrighted the original painting in February 1899. No one knew what sort of phonograph was in that picture, until in 1972 the late Frank Andrews, of the City of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society (CLPGS), realised that Barraud’s copyright application would have been accompanied by a photograph. Searching through a box of applications in the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, he found that photograph, showing the dog in front of an Edison Bell phonograph with a rather ungainly black horn. An illustrated booklet was published in 1973, The Story of ‘Nipper’ and the ‘His Master’s’ Voice Picture, written by Leonard Petts, then archivist at EMI, with assistance from Frank Andrews.

Francis Barraud talked of how “It suddenly occurred to me that to have my dog listening to the phonograph, with an intelligent and rather puzzled expression, and call it ‘His Master’s Voice’, would make an excellent subject” but recently two possible sources for the title, at least, have been put forward in For the Record,* the journal of the CLPGS. In 1888 a painting was exhibited by Sir William Orchardson called Her Mother’s Voice. It is in the Tate Gallery, a typical Victorian narrative picture of a widower listening to his daughter singing and reminding him of her mother. A more probable source is an engraving which appeared in the magazine Black & White in 1891, of a scene in which members of the Browning Society listened, a year after the poet’s death, to a recording of his voice. It was captioned ‘Listening to the Master’s Voice’. Barraud is likely to have been aware of this scene (its title might in turn have been inspired by the Orchardson picture). (*FtR 52, 2014 and 76, 2020)

In 1950, a party from EMI, with two members of the Barraud family, went to a courtyard in Kingston-upon-Thames where it was said that Nipper had been buried. Excavations near the stump of a mulberry tree in what was now a garage parking area revealed no bones that could be definitely identified as those of Nipper, but the site, then behind a bank, is widely regarded as Nipper’s resting place.

The picture, without its title, was registered by The Gramophone Company as a Trade Mark in December 1900 (it had been registered in the USA in July by Emile Berliner, the inventor of the Gramophone). In later years, up to his death in 1924, Francis Barraud was engaged to paint copies of the picture for the Company’s various offices; the original remained in the EMI boardroom for many years, and close inspection shows the pentimenti where the phonograph was overpainted. The picture was reproduced in Gramophone Company publicity from the outset, but did not replace their existing ‘Recording Angel’ trade mark. In the USA, the Victor Talking Machine Company, which was affiliated to the Gramophone Co, made more use of it as a trade mark. The two firms divided the world between them (Victor supplied the Americas and Far East; Gramophone supplied Europe and the British Empire apart from Canada) and thus Nipper and the Gramophone became a worldwide emblem very quickly. Ultimately, it was the British company which used it most prominently, for when a court decided in 1910 that the word Gramophone was no longer a proprietary name, the company registered the picture with the title ‘His Master’s Voice’ and the title alone as Trade Marks. ‘His Master’s Voice’ then became their brand name. It was a clumsy epithet, but public usage soon abbreviated it to HMV, as eventually, after WW2, did the company.

Take-overs, sell-offs and globalisation of products caused EMI to drop the Nipper trade mark by the end of the 20th century, and it was sold to the newly independent HMV shops in 2003.

The famous Nipper picture as revised for the Gramophone Company, from an oleograph

Nipper (photograph by Barraud, Liverpool and Oxford Street, London)

The original picture, with a phonograph, as shown in Barraud’s copyright photograph of 1899 (National Archives: Copy 1/147)

His Master’s Voice, cartoon by Victor Gillam, 1903; already, the picture was well enough known to attract a political cartoonist.

Blue plaque at 126 Piccadilly, London, the location of Francis Barraud’s studio in 1899

Nipper needle tins, 1902-1960; the embossed tin (top left) is the earliest, 1902-3. Top right is a cardboard packet from WW1, and bottom right, one of the many ‘clones’, mainly from overseas, trying to cash in on the dog’s popularity without infringing the trade mark

FRANCIS BARRAUD (1856-1924) English artist with a version of His Master's Voice painting which he originally completed in 1899

Francis Barraud, British, 1899 - His Master's Voice

#art #painting #19th century #francis barraud

"His Master’s Voice”, painted in 1898 by Francis Barraud, was based on his brother’s dog Nipper listening to an Edison cylinder phonograph. Later on, RCA, Victor, and HMV would make this painting synonymous by making this image their logo.

#RCA #music #dogs #pets #sound #Francis Barraud #omega #our lady omega

Nipper (1884 – September 1895) was a dog from Bristol, England, who served as the model for an 1898 painting by Francis Barraud titled His Master's Voice.

#nipper #francis barraud #his master’s voice

His Master's Voice (1898) Francis Barraud (England, 1856-1924)

“The trademark image comes from a painting by English artist Francis Barraud and titled His Master's Voice. It was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly formed Gramophone Company and adopted as a trademark by the Gramophone Company's United States affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a terrier named Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother, Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, along with a cylinder phonograph and recordings of Mark's voice. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the horn, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas. The incident took place at 92 Bold Street, Liverpool.” From Wikipedia

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