When Did You Last See Your Father By William Frederick Yeames. From The World's Greatest Paintings, Published By Odhams Press, London, 1934. Poster Print (20 x 10)

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This man is almost hidden by the shadows in the room. However, he is looking directly at the boy and seems assured that the family is guilty. The oil-on-canvas picture, painted in 1878, depicts a scene in an imaginary Royalist household during the English Civil War. The Parliamentarians have taken over the house and question the son about his Royalist father (the man lounging on a chair in the centre of the scene is identifiable as a Roundhead officer by his military attire and his orange sash [3]). It looks as though it would not give much protection to the wearer, but many men wore a metal skull cap under their hats so that their heads were protected.

Morrison warns us: "don't underestimate filial grief, don't think because you no longer live with your parents, have had a difficult relationship with them, are grown up and perhaps a parent yourself, don't think that will make it any easier when they die." He is right. This painting of a fictional event from the English Civil War (1642 - 1646) is perhaps the most popular work in the Walker Art Gallery. It shows a Royalist house under occupation by Parliamentarians. The young boy is being interrogated as to the whereabouts of the master of the house. Behind him, a soldier gently holds the boy's crying sister. To the left can be seen the children's mother, her fear and anxiety at the boy's possible answer written in her face.In the cars ahead and behind, people are laughing, eating sandwiches, drinking from beer bottles, enjoying the weather, settling into the familiar indignity of waiting-to-get-to-the-front. But my father is not like them. There are only two things on his mind: the invisible head of the queue and, not unrelated, the other half of the country lane, tantalisingly empty. This latter truly admirable picture represented an episode in the wars of the Parliament, when a party of Cromwellian soldiers who have burst into the apartments of a fugitive Royalist, and have captured, we may suppose, the son and heir of the house, are putting to the little boy the fatal question which might lead to the accomplishment of their purpose, and the destruction of the parent through the innocent truthfulness of the son. The child, placed on a footstool in front of the group of stern, cold, ruthless Puritan soldiers, gazes at his interlocutors with a blanched, half-timid face, in which nevertheless is visible the pride of his race, which we hope will carry the little fellow safe through his ordeal. Close by stand his lady mother and loving young sister, who look at him with mingled pride, tenderness, and fear. Nothing could have been more pathetic or better than the situation, whilst it afforded an opportunity for the display of the artist's characteristics and powers to their utmost, an opportunity in nowise neglected at any single point. [199] And When Did You Last See Your Father? was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878, no. 329. In this work Yeames has again left the Tudors behind to select a subject from the Stuart period at the time of the English Civil War between the Royalist suppporters of King Charles I and the Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax. Yeames has painted an imaginary scene where a Roundhead officer and his Parliamentary associates are questioning the young son of a Royalist supporter about his father's current whereabouts. The boy's mother and another woman, perhaps his aunt, are shown to the far left anxiously awaiting his answers. The boy is obviously faced with the dilemma of telling the truth, thereby endangering the life of his father, or going against his conscience by telling a lie. This is Yeames's best-known painting and his undoubted masterpiece. As Yeames's niece Mary Stephen Smith wrote:

I watch my father rise moon-slow to walk to the bathroom, his ankles swelling like loaves from his felt moccasin slippers, twice their usual size, his slender calves bloated, as if everything he drank had sloshed straight down to his ankles. Out of breath, he reaches the bathroom door and gently closes it behind him. Yeames by J. P. Mayall from " Artists at Home", photogravure, published 1884, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC THE FIRST day of life after his death. Friendly but not nosy, the registrar holds a fountain pen and asks me to sit down. She needs to know, for the purposes of the form, who, when, where and how: she needs to know whether I was present at the time. But she does not want to talk about the death more than is strictly necessary, and if she ever knew my father she isn't letting on. I give her his full name. The doctor's certificate says: Cause of death - Carcinoma 1(a). 'What does 1(a) mean?' I ask. Possibly his father is commander of a Royalist army and the Parliamentarians are hoping to gain knowledge of their whereabouts.

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The book is made up of numerous anecdotes of his father’s behavior and how he ofen took advantage of of his long-suffering wife and embarrassed children. Morrison writes: “ I know the contradictions are there: the unsnobbish protector and defender of ‘ordinary decent folk’ had his big house, his Merc, his live-in maid, and was acutely aware of his social status; the sentimental family man could be a bully and tyrant; the open-hearted extrovert had a trove of secrets and hang-ups. . . What would my father’s life have been without these little scams and victories? Not his life, anyway. What will my life be like without his stories of them? Not mine.” The arm around the girl seems to be comforting rather than arresting and he is not looking directly at the scene in front of him. W. F. Yeames fills the place of distinction in this part of the room with a capitally conceived subject representing five Roundheads – commissioners and soldiers of the Long Parliament – in a manor house, seated in solemn conclave round a table, questioning the inmates as to the whereabouts of the Royalist owner. The little boy, in pale blue dress, who is now being examined, with his little sister crying behind him, and his mother and aunt tremblingly anxious in the distance, is the scion of the house, and we know before he speaks that a clear, frank answer will ring out to the insinuating question, "And when did you last see your father?" Mr. Yeames did quite right in not making the presiding commissioner a truculent-looking man. We like the picture very much, even if the perspective is proved to be mathematically wrong. [167]If you select the stretched option, your reproduction of And When Did You Last See Your Father?, 1878 will be stretched over a timber frame and arrive ready to hang straight on the wall. The width of the bars will be about 0.5 inches / 1.5 cm. Stretching is usually done in preparation for framing the painting, that is, sliding the stretched painting into a wooden frame. If you wish to hang the painting without a frame, we recommend selecting the Gallery Wrap service.