His Master’s Voice

One of the most famous of all advertising images is the painting of the dog looking at and listening to the gramophone that has become associated with the words His Master’s Voice. But not many people these days know the name of the dog, or can tell you the story of this painting and the slogan.

Nipper the dog was born in Bristol in Gloucester, England in 1884 and so named because of his tendency to nip the backs of visitors’ legs. When his first master Mark Barraud died destitute in Bristol in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark’s younger brother Francis, a painter.

In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud “often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from”. This scene must have been indelibly printed in Barraud’s brain, for it was three years after Nipper died that he committed it to canvas.

Nipper died in September 1895, having returned from Liverpool to live with Mark Barraud’s widow in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey, England. Though not a thoroughbred, Nipper had plenty of bull terrier in him; he never hesitated to take on another dog in a fight, loved chasing rats and had a fondness for the pheasants in Richmond Park!

In 1898 Barraud completed the painting and registered it on 11 February 1899 as “Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph”.

The story continues that, after many unsuccessful attempts to sell the painting, Barraud managed to get the interest of The Gramophone Company (from which product name we get today’s music award, The Grammy Awards) and was paid a total of 100 pounds for the painting and the copyright—but only after agreeing to overpaint the original black phonograph horn gold to match the buyer’s disc gramophone.

The painting made its first public appearance on The Gramophone Company’s advertising literature in January 1900, and later on some novelty promotional items. However, “His Master’s Voice” didn’t appear on the Company’s letterhead until 1907. The painting and title were finally registered as a trademark in 1910, and remains among the most widely recognized intellectual properties of the twentieth century.

This tale ends with a number of Nipper Facts, of which we find this most curious:

Did you know that…in 2006 it is said by Heather Readman, Surrey, B.C., Canada that it wasn’t the painter who wanted to change the name of the painting to “His Master’s Voice”. It was in fact Heather Readman’s great grandfather, William Graham, who was living in Scotland at the time the Gramophone was being marketed. He entered a contest to put a slogan to the picture and he came up with “His Master’s Voice”. He was to win a “prize” which Heather Readman can only assume was possibly a gramophone, and in order to claim his prize, he had to purchase a specific quantity of merchandise from RCA. He had no money, so he couldn’t ever claim his prize, but the claim to fame in Heather Readman’s family is that it was, in fact, Billy Graham, of the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland, who named the picture “His Master’s Voice”, which was later shortened to “HMV“.

And to that incredible story we’d add that, coincidentally, Nipper is also the name of a famous American patent attorney, who is well-known on the worldwide web for writing The Invent Blog.