Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Barraud, William
BARRAUD, WILLIAM (1810–1850), animal painter, born in 1810, was a grandson of the eminent chronometer maker in Cornhill, who was of an old French family that came over to England at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His taste for art was probably inherited from his maternal grandfather, an excellent miniature painter, but it was not fostered early in life, for on leaving school he was placed in the Custom House, where his father held an appointment. Before long, however, he resigned, in order to follow the profession most in accord with his disposition, and, in pursuance of his purpose, became for some time a pupil of Abraham Cooper. He confined his practice chiefly to horses and dogs, his pictures of which are well drawn, though not marked by any of the higher qualities of art. These he exhibited at the Royal Academy, and occasionally at the British Institution and Society of British Artists, from 1828 until the year of his death. He likewise painted some subject pictures in conjunction with his brother Henry, which are above mediocrity both in conception and treatment. He died in October 1850, in his fortieth year. There is in the South Kensington Museum a water-colour drawing by him of ‘Mares and Foals.’
[Art Journal, 1850, p. 339; Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878; Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (ed. Graves), 1885.]