'Family Prayers', 1864
Family Prayers is Butler’s best-known painting, encapsulating his attitude to Victorian piety. He painted it in 1864 – just after his return from New Zealand and before he enrolled at any art school. Years later, Butler scribbled a pencil note across the top of the canvas: ‘I did this in 1864, and if I had gone on doing things out of my own head instead of making studies I shd have been all right.’
The original oil painting now hangs in the Green Room in St John’s.