Family Prayers (1864)
Butler’s best-known and most frequently exhibited painting encapsulates, with striking honesty, his attitude to Victorian piety. The naïve quality of the work was unusual for its time and shows Butler’s individual style before he underwent formal training at art school, where students were instead encouraged to imitate the old masters. At the top of the picture, in pencil, Butler has written:
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.