'Mr Heatherley's Holiday: An Incident in Studio Life', 1874
Butler’s largest and most impressive painting is his study of Thomas Heatherley, proprietor of the art school, mending the school skeleton. The work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, and the original is now in the Tate.
Even this ‘important’ picture, as Butler referred to it, was founded on a joke: the skeleton at Heatherley’s was always getting knocked about, because the students would dress it up in costumes and dance with it. And Mr. Heatherley himself notoriously never went on holiday, but preferred to stay in London to maintain his studio.